Jackknifed
by Grindylowe
Summary: When the Ice King becomes too much for Marceline to handle, she uses an accidental wish to finally exorcise him from her heart and mind ... but a wish granted by Prismo is never what it seems. Simon / GrownUp Marceline pairing, rated M because of reasons.
1. a fly frozen

**JACKKNIFE**

**and Adventure Time story**

**by Grindylowe**

_(Yes this will be a pairing, probably not explicit. Don't like don't read. Please only read this if you can be a mature human about it and not send hate mail or paste pointlessly hateful reviews just because you don't like the ship, I'm not interested and it just makes you look like a petty twat. If this pairing is triggering or grosses you out just click away, don't dwell, and find a better use for your time._

_Anyway all that unpleasantness aside here's the first bit. Hope you enjoy it!)_

**chapter one**

**a fly frozen**

"Did you use my shower?" Marceline asked, slamming the bathroom door behind her.

"No," the Ice King said immediately.

"Yes you did! It's full of hair!"

"What if it's your hair? Did you ever think of that?"

"No! Because it's long and white!"

"Okay okay, sorry," he said. "Gunter got the poops while you were gone and I needed to give him a bath, and it was just easier if I got in the bath with him, and your shampoo smelled like strawberries so- "

"The poops?" she asked, right before the smell hit her. "Ugh! Ew, oh my god! Where?"

"Behind the couch," he said sheepishly.

"The couch is pushed up against the wall! How did he even get back there?"

"Because I moved it."

"Why!?"

"To get the fly."

"What are you even talking about?"

"There was a fly, it was buzzing really loud, and I was trying to record our latest jam, so I started firing ice blasts at it, and I got it! I blasted a hole in the floor but I got it! See! Look at that little sucker! Didn't even know what hit him," he said, proudly producing a fly frozen into a golf-ball-sized chunk of ice. "I thought Gunter was going to poop in the hole but he just pooped next to it, so I -"

With a groan Marceline shoved the couch away from the wall, only to see a smear of penguin feces next to a hole in the floor that revealed the cave stone below. "Ugh!" she cried. "I leave you alone here for half an hour and you destroy my house! You can't just do that! You're a guest here! Do you even understand what that means?"

He looked at her blankly.

"That means you have to be careful with my stuff! And I told you to take your toothbrush home! Why did you even bring it? I still don't want to even KNOW how your underwear ended up in my closet last week! Be gentle with my stuff and take your crap with you when you go, okay? You can't just … slowly move in with me, or whatever. And if you have a sick Gunter leave him at home! We're here to play music, not - " she gestured wildly with her hands, trying to find the right words - "not to be, like, the weirdest roommates ever!"

The Ice King walked up to her, opened her hand, and put something cold into it. She looked down and saw that he'd given her the fly he'd frozen into an ice chunk.

"That's for you!" he said. "Better?"

"No!" she cried, throwing the fly across the room. It bounced off the wall and nailed the sick Gunter right between the eyes.

"Gunter!" he gasped, rushing to pick up the dazed penguin. He turned to Marceline with a scowl. "What did you do that for? What did poor Gunter do to you?"

"Well he pooped all over my house, for starters," she said, crossing her arms.

"Shhh, she doesn't mean it, little Gunty," he said cradling the penguin in his arms.

"Yes I do!"

"Gunty Gunty Gunty baby, don't listen to that mean dumb lady," he sang.

"That's it! Get out!" she shouted.

He seemed taken aback. "But our song isn't done! You said we would record it today!"

"Go home!"

"But … but you said - "

"I don't care what I said!"

"But Marceline! I'll never bag a Princess if I don't have cool music!"

"You're never going to bag a Princess anyway! You're a rude crazy old man and no one likes you! Get out of here and take your stupid pooping penguin with you!"

"Well - well fine, then, if you're going to be like that!" he said, opening the front door. "Is it your time of the month or something?"

At that Marceline felt her body begin to distort and swell, growing demonic with anger. "Take. Your. Toothbrush. With. You," she seethed, shaking. He gently put Gunther down and began to walk slowly towards the bathroom, but his mere presence angered her so much that she stretched and snaked her arm back to the sink, grabbed the offending toothbrush, and threw it at him. He flinched as it struck him in the face.

"Hey! Not the face! The face is for the Bubblegum!"

Marceline felt lava bubble and erupt in her chest, her back arching up into scaled bumps, hair growing into wild tentacles. Her eyes glowed red. "And. Your. Underpants!" she commanded in a deep, satanic timbre, pointing one long, jaggedly clawed finger at the closet.

He sprinted to the closet and threw the door open and snatched his unmentionables up off the floor. When he got back to Gunter and stuffed the sickly penguin into them like a satchel, then levitated a couple feet off the ground, his beard flapping. He opened his mouth to say something, but Marceline's sight had tinged red with anger. "I don't care what you're about to say, go HOME!"

"Hey! You don't get to just yell at me and order me around!' he yelled back. "We were supposed to record today! You were supposed to be helping me! You're not helping me, you're just being a - a big old bitch, is what you're being!"

"All I DO. IS HELP YOU. SIMON!" she screamed, flames licking at the corners of her mouth.

"Who the heck is Simon? Why do you keep calling me that!?" he yelled back.

Feeling as though she might do something drastic, she twisted her demonic hands into her demonic hair and pulled. "Get out of my house before I DESTROY YOU!"

"Fine! Fine, I'll go! And I'll never come back! I've never liked you, Marceline, not even a little bit! I just wanted your help getting Princesses and that's ALL! And you're even useless for that! You're mean and ugly and rude and you smell! Your music is all you have going for you and it's not even that good, I'll do better on my own! I'm - I'm going back to my place to -to have a big party - and you're not invited, you big dumb - "

With that Marceline lost control of her anger and shrieked a huge tentacle of fire in the Ice King's direction, which he blocked with a burst of gravity-laden ice that sent her careening back into her living room wall. The impact shocked her back into her normal form, jarring her. When she recovered she found herself behind a wall of ice, the Ice King long gone, and everything quiet. Through the ice she could see that she'd burned her door right out of the doorframe with her flame tentacle, along with singeing most of the wall black. There were great veins of ice leading up to the wall of ice he'd formed to fend off her attack, a wall which she was trapped behind until it melted - that was, unless she could summon enough rage to breath another fire tentacle, but she was so drained she knew that wasn't in the cards.

Her lower lip started to twitch, just a little. She bit into it with all her might as she slid down along the wall and sat on the floor, her arms wrapped around her knees, waiting for the ice to melt and free her. She took a deep breath to keep herself from crying, and with that breath came the still-present odor of Gunter's accident behind the couch.

_Dad was right. I try and try and try to reach him and this is what I get,_ she thought_._

Her father's words came rushing back to her. "Marcy, you're wasting your time. When are you going to see that 'Simon' is no longer in there? It's all the crown now, sweetie."

At the time she'd smirked. "Okay Dad, whatever you say."

He glanced at his watch. "I've got business. Now I don't want to hear any more of this Simon nonsense from you. Next time we talk I want you to tell me that you're ready to take over the NightoSphere!"

"Never gonna happen."

"Love you too," he said absently, rushing out the door. "Bye now sweetie."

She sighed, resting her forehead against her arms. Maybe it really was time to let Simon go. She'd never reach someone that no longer existed, after all. But sometimes - every now and then - she'd see something, a glimmer, a gesture, and laugh, and he was Simon again, _her_ Simon, and every single time it happened he jackknifed his way back into her heart without even knowing what it was he did to her, as oblivious to her feelings as a Gunter.

_He doesn't know why you care about him. He doesn't remember. He doesn't care about YOU. He CAN'T care about you. All he can do is make your life WORSE. _

She sighed, looking around her wrecked, stinking house. She saw something through the shimmering ice wall that would have stopped her heart if it wasn't long stopped already, something long and curved and red and wrong. She leaned in closer, wiping the ice with her hand.

"Oh no," she breathed.

It was her axe bass, one half swelled and cracked with ice, the other exploded and burnt, strings poking wildly in all directions. She gave a resigned sigh, rested her forehead against the ice wall, and finally allowed a tear to escape. That one tear was followed by another, and another, until she leaned against the ice wall silently weeping.

"Okay," she said to herself. "Okay. I'm sorry Simon. I can't do it anymore." She sniffed, wiped her eyes, and took a deep breath. "Enough is enough."

**000**


	2. a square of yellow light

**chapter two**

**a square of yellow light**

By the time the ice wall melted it was night and Marceline felt restless and lonely. It was spring but she'd caught a few hours worth of chill, so she slipped on a coat and floated out her destroyed door. She wasn't even sure where she meant to go, only that she needed to get out of the garbage heap the Ice King had turned her house into. Somewhere deep down she was hungry but a thick plug of sadness filled her throat, a sadness no red would slide past. Nevertheless the night was clear and cool and refreshing, so she floated aimlessly over hills and fields, her mind blank. After a long while she realized that she was heading for Finn and Jake's house, which used to be her house, and which was as good a place as any. Finn and Jake were usually down to hang out if they weren't on an adventure, and she could use some company and distraction.

As she neared the house she saw the windows were dark. Fearing she'd missed them, she turned around and headed - where? - but stopped when she heard a voice.

"Oh Hey! Marceline!" Jake called. She turned just in time to see him step out of a flat square of yellow light which had unceremoniously opened in reality.

"Whoa!" she said. "Jake, I didn't know you could rip spacetime! Cool!"

"Huh? Oh! I didn't do that, that's Prismo."

Marceline's brow furrowed. "Prismo?" she asked. That name sounded familiar somehow.

"Yeah, we go way back. We're just listening to some tunes and I'm gonna go get some stuff to make enchiladas."

"Wait, Prismo the time room guy? The _wish master_? You're just, like….friends with him?"

"Yeah! He's a pretty cool dude," Jake said, stepping fully out of the square of light. "You should come hang out with us." He leaned closer to her, whispering conspiratorially, "Please."

Marceline chuckled. "Okay. Why all the secrecy?"

"Prismo really needs to get used to being around girls. I mean the case might be terminal if he doesn't at least talk to one at some point in the space-time continuum."

"Heh. Okay. Sure, I'll be the guinea pig."

"Thanks Marcy, you're the best! Be right back!"

"Wait - " she said, before she could stop herself.

"What's up?" Jake asked.

"Have you -" she began, grimacing at her own inability to avoid asking, "I know you and Jake keep an eye on Ice King. Have you seen him at all today?"

"Oh. Yeah. We did," Jake said.

"You did? Was he okay?"

"Not…really. He was kinda…flying. And sobbing. While flying. And then he landed and asked us why we don't like him, but he didn't even wait for answer, just flew off because Gunter was puking on his beard. It was really … uncomfortable."

Marceline winced. "Sorry. We had a fight."

"Yeah, well…" Jake began, but his voice faded and he looked at the ground. He was another member of the chorus of friends and family who'd warned her about the inevitable disappointment her friendship with Ice King would bring. He'd mentioned it to her enough times that he knew he needn't mention his take on it again. He shrugged. "You guys'll work it out. Okay, go in there and chat Prismo up a bit. If he gets really awkward remember I'll be right back."

She smiled. "Okay. Thanks Jake."

The yellow dog dashed off over the meadow to the treehouse. Marceline leaned her head into the prism of yellow light, and was surprised to find herself in the doorway of a large yellow room, across three walls of which was what looked like a huge pink silhouette with one moving eye.

"Hello?" she asked.

"Hi?" the silhouette asked.

"Hey. I'm Marceline," she said, stepping fully into the room. "You're Prismo, right?"

The large eye locked on her. Blinked once. Then again. "Yes."

"Hi."

"….Hi. I'm Prismo. This is my. Uh. Time room. It's outside of time. But you know that. Because you're here."

She nodded. "Sure."

"Yeah." He paused for a moment. "I didn't know someone had inserted the gems into the Enchiridion again," he said. "Wow. Busy year. Anyway, let's get down to business," the shadow said.

With a pop the portal closed behind her.

"Hey!" she said.

"Look, I have kind of a whole night planned, so let's be quick about this. What's your wish?"

"My wish?"

"Yes, your wish. You get one."

"No, I wasn't here for that, I'm a friend of …" She blinked, the wheels in her mind turning. "What, like…any wish?"

"Yup."

"Just one though?"

"Yes," Prismo said impatiently.

"What if I wish for more -"

"No wishing for more wishes! Come ON, that's like Genie 101. What's your name again?"

"Marceline."

"Look Marceline, I have a thing I want to get back to, so just spit it out and let's get on with this. Obviously you want something, so what is it?"

"I -" she thought of the Ice King, flying and sobbing, of how she knew she would not be able to resist going to his home sometime that night to apologize, to renew their doomed friendship, to helplessly invite more heartbreak and chaos into her life. It was like he had ice barbs in her heart that refused to melt no matter how angry he made her, barbs no tentacle of fire could touch. It wasn't the first time she'd looked inward in shame at how deep his claws were in her, at how she couldn't even pretend not to care, at the pity in Jake and Finn and her dad's eyes when she talked about Simon.

"I - I wish…."

"Yes?"

"I wish I didn't long for Simon like a little girl," she said suddenly.

Prismo blinked. "You sure?"

"Yes."

"Is that your final answer?"

"Yes," she said more firmly.

"Alrighty then. Poof!"

And she blinked out of the Time Room, one moment there, one moment not.

Prismo yawned. There was a knock at the portal. He opened it to reveal Jake, packages of cheese and tortillas piled high in his arms.

"Hey," Prismo said.

"Hey!" Jake replied. "Where's Marceline?"

"Marceline?" Prismo asked. "Oh, was she with you?"

**000**


	3. gunk and meat and paper

**chapter three**

**gunk and meat and paper**

The cold hit her chest like a sledgehammer.

She'd landed - if landed was the right term - unevenly, and found herself tripping over her own ankles before resorting to her usual hover. She was in a dark tunnel of some sort, with rectangular walls. The floor beneath her was tile, old and cracked, the ceiling constructed of flimsy panels, many of which had long fallen out of place to reveal sagging lengths of electrical wire. Long dead plants slumped in planters behind dust-covered benches, and on the opposite wall she saw several words, different fonts in dusty bas-relief: SP RTS AUTH R TY, HOT T PIC, STA BU KS. When she exhaled she ejected a plume of bright white condensation.

"Glob," she said, hugging her arms close. It had to be damn cold to make a vampire shiver. Wherever she suddenly was, it must have been the dead middle of winter. She floated silently down the corridor, hugging herself. There were large spaces beneath the bas-relief lettering that looked like they might have once been shops. She kept her eye out for anything that resembled a coat, the surroundings taking on a gradual familiarity that made her distinctly uneasy. When had she last been in a place like this?

There was a sudden crash. She jerked and spun in midair, instinctively going invisible and flattening herself against the nearest wall. There was a series of booms that increased in volume, making the wall against her back vibrate. Something very big was galumphing and squishing and heaving down the tunnel perpendicular to the one she was in, loud enough to take her breath away. A sound made itself suddenly distinct against the galumphing - the click-clack-click-clack of boots against tile, and something else ….

…panting, she realized.

"Mother, Mother, Mother, Mother, Mother," it said. "Oh, Mother. Mother Mother Mother."

Her eyes widened as a blue skinned man bolted across the space that connected the two tunnels, pausing long enough to take a sawed-off shotgun from a holster slung across his back, cock it, and aim at whatever was chasing him. He fired once, twice, three times, to seemingly no effect, before the gun gave an unsatisfying, empty click.

"Mother," he said, and threw the gun to the tile floor with a clatter. The great galumphing thing was getting louder and closer, and he danced momentarily on the balls of his feet before seeming to come to a choice, grabbing at the golden crown strapped to his belt and thrusting it down on his head.

"Simon, _NO!_" Marceline shouted, and he spun to identify the voice, his eyes wide and white as saucers, before a long tentacle struck him across the chest and sent him flying. What happened next took place so quickly that Marceline barely had time to make sense of it. Some sort of huge trash-creature, all hooves and slime and tentacles, reared up on it's hind quarters and roared, followed by an enraged human scream, and powerful blasts of lightning ice. The creature howled and turned down the tunnel Marceline was in, so quickly that she couldn't escape it. Great garbage-hooves bore down upon her head, a towering bull of gunk and meat and paper, and she felt a blast of intense cold before all went dark.

**000**

Something over her face snapped. She was blind, gasping and coughing and spitting shards. Something circular pressed hard into her cheek. Marceline struggled to move but could not. She was surrounded by frigid stone on all sides, biting and burning her skin. The world fuzzed into reality - she was lying down, looking at the ceiling, surrounded by tall, glowing orange grids. Along with vision came the bulk of the pain, a horrible clumsy freezing numbness that felt like it could kill her dead skin all over again.

"Oh _glob_," she wheezed in pain, struggling to move.

Again the cold circle pressed against her cheek.

"Who are you?" a voice asked.

She squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again, only to find herself staring up at a crownless Simon, who stared coldly down at her, the barrel of the shotgun between them.

"Simon, no," she whimpered.

He cocked the gun loudly and pushed it into her face. "How do you know my name?"

"It's me," she said and gasped in pain. She was trapped in a chunk of ice. She thought of the fly.

"And _you_ are?"

"Marceline."

His eyes widened but he didn't move the gun. "Marcel…?"

"Marcy."

His jaw went slightly slack. He squinted down at her.

"Marcy," she said again. "Oh glob, Simon, please, it hurts."

Simon blinked a few times in rapid succession, as though trying to clear fog from his eyes. "The … the girl?"

"Yes! Marceline!" she gasped. "Marcy! _GUNTER!_"

At this he jerked. "Marcy?" he asked incredulously, lowering the gun. "Marcy? Little Marcy baby? You're _alive?_"

"Yes!"

"But - how? And - and you're so _big!_"

"Simon _please!_" she moaned and started to sob.

"Mother! Oh Mother!" he said, dropping the shotgun and tripping over himself to get to the glowing orange grates, which he pushed closer to her. She could feel warmth radiating off them. "The space heaters should help, I - Oh god Marcy, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry - what can I - " he spun and dashed somewhere out of her field of view.

"_SIMON!_" she screamed, her voice pure fear.

"I'm here, I'm here! I'm just looking for -yes! Found it!" He ran back to her holding a huge metal icepick above his head in his left hand, and a wooden two by four in his right. "Just hold tight baby girl, I'm gonna get you out of there quicker than you can -" and before he even finished his sentence his brought the icepick down, hard, into the ice directly above Marceline's heart.

She screamed again in wordless terror as she watched Simon beat the icepick down closer to her with the two by four, utterly convinced that he would accidentally drive it into her heart like a stake and really kill kill her, kill her for good. In her horror she couldn't recall if the stake had to be wooden to do the final job, but she had no time to consider minutiae when her death was so near. She struggled against the ice, screaming in fear, until suddenly she felt a release of the pressure around her, heard a series of cracks. Simon pushed the ice chunks off her and gathered her limp body up in his arms.

"It's okay, it's okay," he chanted "Oh, you got _heavy_," he said as he pulled her from the icy tomb and against himself. He sat her in his lap and quickly wrapped the both of them up in a warm, dry blanket, then scooted them to a space heater, placing the shivering woman between himself and the glowing orange coils. Under the blanket he clutched her, rubbing his callused hands along her arms and back. She shuddered in stringing pain as her nerves remembered how to feel, resting her chin weakly over his shoulder like a rag doll, wanting to weep but too listless to pull it off.

He rocked her back and forth, humming softly. "Shhh shhhh. Shhhhh. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry Gunter, I didn't know it was you. I didn't know. I don't remember you growing up." He clutched her tighter and gave a sudden, loud, tortured sob. "Oh Mother,_ I don't remember you growing up!_ How could I - how many years have I forgotten? It's all a blank." He gave another wracked, desperate sob, stroking her hair. "Oh god, it's all a blank."

"Simon," Marceline said weakly. "No."

She wanted to tell him that he hadn't missed anything, that if she was correct they couldn't have been more than two or three years from when her father plucked her seven year old self back from Simon's care, and back to the NightoSphere. She wanted to tell Simon that he hadn't missed her growing up because she hadn't YET had a chance to. But she was too weak, so she listened to his weeping agony as he tried to recover something, anything, about the decade he assumed had passed through his fingers like sand.

His body jerked as he ripped the crown from his belt. "Damn this damn thing!" he snarled. She felt him throw it, heard it bang loudly against a wall then roll to a stop. He sighed and held her closer, resting his face in the crook of her shoulder. "Damn it to hell."

**000**


	4. kismet, then

**chapter four: kismet, then**

"Sorry I aimed a shotgun at your face."

Marceline smiled. "That's okay, the coat makes up for it."

He chuckled, stirring the small mug of canned soup he'd placed on a hot plate. "It is a pretty nice coat."

"It's straight baller," she said, tugging affectionately at the fur collar. It would turn out that Simon had a lot of coats. He had taken to living in the basement of a derelict suburban shopping mall, as he would later explain to Marceline while giving her 'the grand tour.' It was about as secure as secure could get, he told her. It had been an employees only area when in use, with a deadbolt on every thick steel door. He slept in a room that used to be a safe. There was even a generator he'd rigged to run on a hand crank attached to a bicycle, which he rode on every morning for an hour. "I get some exercise and a couple hour's worth of electricity," he'd say proudly. He long ago ransacked the mall of supplies, which resulted in shelves of books and closets full of clothes and bedding, anything he could get his hands on, even jewelry. The space was lived in and dark but had the feel of old, scholarly classiness to it. The only thing he didn't have was food, so he often took trips out into the woods to hunt, hence the shotgun.

The coat he gifted her was an absolutely huge, hip length fur number, made with the fluffy black and white-tipped hide of some animal. When she stood it dwarfed her skinny legs quite fetchingly, setting off her red leather cowboy boots. She also wore an off-the-shoulder purplish gray sweatshirt and her favorite black velvet miniskirt. It wasn't the warmest attire but if she was going to be blasted back in time she was glad it was in one of her favorite outfits.

Simon looked up from his cooking and smiled at her. "You starting to feel better?"

_Oh my glob_, she thought._ I'm really actually HERE._

Everything happened so fast. She wasn't sure what she'd expected when she'd made her wish, but it wasn't this. She figured Prismo would just remove her sadness about Ice King from her in some sort of emotional operation, not send her back in time to see Simon himself. If anything this was making it worse -or it would once she calmed down and processed it all. She was a bit too worked up to know what she felt, only that seeing him again -_ her_ Simon - after all this time was like salve on a thousand year old burn.

"Here you go," Simon said, handing her the soup in a red mug. "I've been saving this for an emergency, so eat up."

"Thanks," she said. She pressed her lips to the warm mug and drained it of pigment.

Simon stared. Blinked. Shook his head quickly, as though trying to dislodge something.

"You okay?" Marceline asked.

"Yes. Yeah, I'm fine. I just … sometimes I see things I'm not sure are real."

"Oh that was real," Marceline said. She plucked a read hardcover book from a nearby pile and drained it, then wiped her mouth. "If I get hungry I start wanting to eat my boots. Don't they look good?" she asked, extending her leg for him to see.

Simon looked perplexed. "What did you - how did you - ?"

"I'm a vampire."

"Oh Marcy," he said indulgently. "I know lots of kids go through that phase, but aren't you a little old for that now?"

She laughed and grinned, showing her fangs. "I'm serious."

He blinked. "Okay. You did have gray skin and pointed ears growing up, and I did find a crown that gives me control of ice, and I was just chased around by a trash monster, you'd think I'd be used to stuff like this by now. But vampires drink blood."

"Yeah, but we don't have to. I choose to survive on shades of red."

"You don't say?" Simon picked up the now-white book and examined it. He opened it and raised his eyebrows. "You even got the illustrations."

She burped politely and giggled. "Yeah, I'm pretty full." She handed the mug of soup back to him.

He shrugged. "More for me, I guess."

"Eat up."

"Yes ma'am," he said, and sipped at the mug, looking at her. The look turned into a gaze, which made Marceline smile uneasily. He smiled and shook his head.

"What?" she asked.

"You grew up into such a beautiful lady. I mean I'm not surprised, but … yeah. There it is," he said sheepishly, but then a pained look crossed his face. "I'm so sorry I didn't get to see it. Marcy -whatever happened when you vanished - whatever I did - I'm so sorry sweetie." He put the mug down, leaned forward and took her hand. "But you're ok, and you grew up, and you're here now!"

"Simon -"

He squeezed her hand. "I'm so happy to see you, you have no idea. Look at you! All grown up, and so pretty, my pretty girl." He cupped her face. His hand was warm. "Ah, Marcy," he sighed, and drew her into a hug.

She wrapped her arms around him. The first thing that struck her was how very different this hug was than the Simon hugs of her memory. Those hugs were her chubby little arms around his waist, a quick squeeze before running off, playing. This hug was her arms wrapped around an entire person -his bony shoulders and wiry arms, the soft, scratchy hair of his beard on her shoulder and neck, the gentle pressure of his chest. She felt the air fill his lungs when he sighed, felt his ribs through his shirt. The Simon hugs she remembered were like wrapping her arms around a tree. This Simon was a man, and felt like a man. The contrast jarred her.

When he pulled away he took her hands in his. "So," he said sadly, "remind me what's happened the last ten years. Garlic balls, I didn't think the memory loss had gotten that bad, I could swear it's only been four years since you went missing."

She smiled. "That's because it _has_ only been four years, dummy."

He blinked. "Then how do you explain … you?"

She began to reply, but hesitated. How much should she tell him? What _could_ she tell him? Somehow the truth seemed cruel - she couldn't tell him that she arrived here as a product of a wish to forget him entirely, especially when she had no idea what the mechanism of that was supposed to be? After a moment she decided on a satisfactory half truth and went with it.

"I'm from the future," she said. "I was sent back in an … an accident."

He considered this. "Wowza … of all the times you could have been sent back to, you were sent back here? To me?"

She shrugged. "Stranger things have happened."

"Well! Kismet, then."

"Kismet?"

"Fate. Meant to be. Old Arabic word."

"Guess so."

He cocked his head. "How far in the future, then? Five or six years?"

She ginned. "A little under one thousand, actually."

Simon's eyes grew wide. "What?"

She nodded.

"You're pulling my arm."

"I'm not. I'm a half demon vampire, I'm gonna be around a long time. You will too. You're there, in that future. Just … older."

He pressed his hand to his chest.

"You okay?"

"Yes, I … yeah. I … are you serious?"

She nodded.

"A thousand years?"

"Yup."

"You're … you're serious? You're really - ? You're not having a bit of fun with old Simon, are you?"

"Nope."

A slow grin grossed his face. "Wow. Wow, I - I don't even - I mean I never even dreamed - I know the crown was keeping me alive but I didn't think it would keep me alive that … long …." Suddenly the smile fell from his face, and with it Marceline's heart. She knew exactly what he was thinking. "But after one thousand years of the crown…."

"It's not pretty, no," she said softly.

"Do I want to know?"

She hesitated. What could she tell him? That he was a senile, crazy old letch with a penchant for kidnapping whom the citizens of Ooo merely tolerated? That he owned a flock of penguins that routinely pooped all over her house? That he was known to drop down and twerk for no reason? In public?

"Probably not," she said.

He took a deep, dismal sigh. "So I never did learn to control it, did I?"

She shook her head.

"Bread balls." He took his glasses off, rubbed his eyes. "Oh, bread balls. So whatever I did to lose you four years ago … I'll keep doing?"

"You didn't do anything to lose me."

"Yes I did - I must have. I - " he paused, his brow furrowed in concentration. "I don't quite - forgive me, the memory is foggy. You were there, I put on the crown to save us from - from that _thing_ -and next thing I knew you were gone. Just … gone. No idea what happened to you. I'm not even sure how much time passed until something finally knocked the crown off my head and I came back down. I - I couldn't find you. I was … devastated. I couldn't … oh Marcy, I'm so sorry, baby."

She shook her head. "Don't be. That _thing_ was my dad. He finally found me, he didn't know who you were, so he attacked you and you put on the crown to fight back. I was screaming at him to leave you alone, but like usual he didn't listen to me. _That's_ something that hasn't changed in a thousand years," she said, laughing grimly. "But yeah, he took me to the Nightosphere. Didn't even let me say goodbye."

Simon's shoulders slumped. He closed his eyes.

"You okay?" she asked.

"Give me a minute," he said softly. He cleared his throat. His eyes welled over and he quickly wiped the tears away. "Bread balls," he said shakily. "Ah, sorry. I'm just … I'm very happy to hear that. You …you have no idea."

"Why?"

"Because I -" he made what sounded like the start of a sob, but it shifted to a violent coughing fit. Marceline looked around, saw half-full bottle of water, and handed it to.

"Thank you," he said. He took a drink, cleared his throat. Collected himself. "I'm happy to hear that because I thought I let the thing get you, and that it had … had done terrible things to you, and killed you. Or that … that I had … when I didn't remember, when I was crazy … that I killed you myself."

"Oh my glob… Simon, no. Never."

He looked up at her. The pain in her eyes bored straight through her. "You don't know the … the years … the years of guilt - "

"Shhh, my glob Simon, it's okay," she said, leaning forward to put her arms around him. "It's okay, it wasn't your fault. You didn't do anything wrong," she said softly, stroking his hair. He wrapped his arms tightly around her, clutched her to him. They stayed that way for a while.

"I'm so happy to see you," he whispered.

"I bet," she said. "I'm happy to see you too Simon. It's been a thousand years and you're still the best person I've ever met."

He laughed. "You must have met some real crappy folks."

"There's some pretty bad ones, yeah. But some really great ones too." She smiled. "You'll meet them all too, one day."

"Sure, but what kind of person will I be by then?"

"Still wonderful. Just … sillier."

He chuckled. "Oh dear."

She released him, smiling, then gently kissed his forehead, which made him smile. "Come on," she said. "I'm feeling better now. Show me around your palace."

"As you wish, Princess," he said, rising to his feet and offering her his hand. "If the Princess wants the grand tour of Castle Basement, then the grand tour she shall have."

She raised her eyebrows. "Queen, actually."

"Now you're messing with me."

"What, my being royalty is somehow less believable than the rest of it?"

He laughed.

He gave her the tour, which ended in the bedroom he'd made inside a safe. "I call it the panic bedroom," he said.

"Epic door," she mused, gazing at the enormous steel mechanism. "It looks like … like a _dimensional_ thing, you know?"

"I … don't."

"Like it's gonna take you somewhere really intense."

"Ah. Well, it is! My bedroom."

Marceline gave him a sort of incredulous look and they both started laughing.

"You're old enough for that sort of humor now, right?" he said, a touch uneasily.

"Yeah, for like seven hundred years, nerd."

"Oh, ouch," he said, melodramatically pressing his hand to his heart. "_Nerd_. You _wound_ me. But yes -this is it. Mi casa. Es su casa, incidentally. You can take the bed. If you sleep. Do you sleep?"

"Sure do! But you don't have to give me your -"

"No, I won't hear of it, it's all yours. I can sleep on the couch."

"You really don't -"

"It's fine, Marceline, I sleep there all the time. You'd be amazed at how well one sleeps on an eight thousand dollar couch."

She blinked. "Whoa. Seriously?"

He nodded. "That coat you're wearing is a few grand as well. It's amazing how much the value of these things collapses when civilization crumbles." He shrugged. "If you're gonna ransack, you may as well ransack the best."

"How long have you been here?"

"About three and a half years. After you vanished, I … I decided to try to set up my life in a way that I could use the crown as little as possible. No more wandering around with no place to go. I needed a stable home base that was safe, where I wouldn't be threatened by anything, where I wouldn't need to use it unless there was an absolute emergency.

"Or a trash monster?"

"Touche. That thing followed me home. But that was the first time I've used the crown in … gosh, I'd say eight months? I only leave here to hunt. That's it," he said, swiping his hand hard in a gesture of finality. "That way I minimize the risk. I didn't want to hurt anyone else, or risk losing myself entirely. Every time I have to put it on I'm not sure I'll ever be able to take it off, you know?"

"I know."

He smiled sadly. "I know you do. _God_ it's good to see you!"

"It's good to see you too Simon."

He yawned. "Well, Princess, I ought to get some shuteye. And you too. I wasn't able to get out and hunt today, but I'll have to tomorrow. You can come with me if you like."

"Sure, I'd like that."

"Ok then. Give us a hug," he said, and she obliged. When they separated he cupped her face in his hand, kissed her forehead, and whispered, "Please still be here in the morning."

**ooo**


	5. saying her name for the first time

**chapter five**

**saying her name for the first time**

There was a knock at the door. The door was so thick that the knock sounded more like a tap, but it was enough to wake her.

"Marcy?" Simon asked softly.

"Mm?"

"Can I come in?"

She yawned, stretched, and sat up. "It's your room dude."

He poked his head around the door. "Well I - " he began, but suddenly stopped short. A blush crossed his face and he averted his eyes, then cleared his throat and continued. "Heh. It's time to get up, is all. Gotta get hunting. I'm uh … I'm sorry I didn't give you anything to sleep in, that was, ah, thoughtless. Of me. Sorry."

"Hm?" Marceline said. She looked down and realized that she hovered a few inches above the bed, bare-shouldered, holding the down comforter against her chest. She's slept in her underpants and tube top she sometimes used as a comfortable bra, but to Simon it must have looked like she'd slept in his bed naked. Realizing this she blushed furiously, stammered to say something, but all that came out was "No - I'm not - it's … it's ok."

"No, we'll get you - I mean - I have. Things for you to. Yeah. For that. Sleeping. Sorry." He shook his head quickly. "Welp, breakfast is ready when you want it, shower's down the hall in the locker room, you can't miss it. Towels and a bathrobe in the closet there next to you. I, uh … I'll be around."

"Okay, thanks Simon," she said.

"Righty-o," he said, and walked down the hall whistling. The sound of that whistling was so old, yet so familiar, a warm whiplash of memory. Simon whistling as he thought of ways to occupy seven-year-old her, when he was trying to keep her calm when he himself was not, when he was at a loss and trying to summon ideas. Simon only whisted when he was nervous, and he'd certainly seemed so just now. She felt embarrassed as well, though she wasn't sure why. It was just a misapprehension on his part, no big deal. _He's probably just not used to seeing random naked chicks in his bed, the big dork,_ she thought, chuckling. Yes, that was it. She had an animal's sense of smell and the bed smelled like Simon, and Simon only, for years.

She'd slept like a baby.

**000**

Breakfast was a cutting board, a silverware divider, a ruler, two magazines, and a potholder, all red. She laughed when she saw them at a set table, each arranged on their own plate, with a fork and knife and napkin. Simon glanced over his shoulder at her and went back to stirring grits over a hot plate.

"Is that enough?' he asked. "There's plenty of other red things around. Never really realized how many red things there are. Hell, the lockers in the locker room are red if you get really desperate."

"I noticed," she said, sitting down at her breakfast. "This is awesome, Simon. Thank you."

"Not a problem," he said, and sat down across from her. "Wow am I tired of these," he said, slopping the grits from his spoon back down into the bowl. "Especially since all the butter in the world is gone. At least I found some salt again. Ever lived without salt? It's a true misery, let me tell you."

She shrugged. "I'll have to take your word for it." She lifted the potholder to her mouth and drained it.

He cocked his head. "That is really interesting to watch."

She smiled and drained the ruler.

"Do different shades of red taste differently?"

She nodded. "Oh totally. The pinker it is the sweeter it tends to be, but it's less filling. Different objects taste different, too. The ruler was kinda woodsy and savory, like … like a mushroom? I think? It's been a while."

"What did the potholder taste like?"

"Um. Laundry. But it was a real nice dark red so that balanced it out."

"No kidding! Kind of like wine tasting?"

She shrugged. "I guess?"

He waved his hand dismissively. "Wine tasting is mostly bullshit anyway."

She laughed. "Whoa, Simon cussed! You didn't even tell me to cover my ears!"

He smiled. "I think I've lost some moral authority there. You have, what, a good nine hundred thirty odd years on me? You should be telling me to cover _my_ ears."

"Fuck censorship," she said, draining the cutting board.

"Fuckin' a right."

"Shiiiiiiit."

He nodded in approval. "Tell you what, fuck these motherfucking _grits_. Ugh."

"They don't look very good."

"They're not. But, gotta keep my strength up, so, down the hatch. Bleh." He took ate a spoonful and grimaced. "Wish I could just eat colors. Make my life a lot easier."

Marceline grinned, showing her fangs. "Want me to bite ya', Simon?"

He chuckled. "Um, no. Think I'll pass."

She leaned over the table like she was trying sell him on it. "You sure? That first bite, man." She lowered her voice. "It's like ten thousand times better than sex," she whispered.

His eyes widened. He blushed, looked away, and Marceline felt a wave of adoration crash through her. _Oh Glob, look how cute and flustered he is, the big doof!_ she thought. She wiggled her eyebrows at him. He laughed nervously and looked at the table. "I, uh … I think that might react badly with our little friend over there," he said, jerking his head towards the crown, which he'd placed on his survival pack on the chair next to him.

"Ohh … yeah good point." She shrugged. "No colors for you, then."

"C'est la vie. Lemme just choke this glop down and we'll get going. Have you ever fired a shotgun?"

"Nope."

"I'll teach you."

She shrugged. "If you want. What's the weather like, do you know?"

He swallowed a mouthful of grits. "Mmm. Cold. Sunny. Oh breadballs, you're a vampire, you can't go out in that, can you?"

"It's cool. If you have a hooded sweatshirt or an umbrella, I'll be fine."

"You sure?'

"Yep. So long as I stay out of direct sunlight I'm good to go."

"Okay," he said. "I have both."

**000**

"You can't really hunt with a sawed-off shotgun unless you're at ridiculously short range. It's like trying to bring down a buck by throwing popcorn at it, not gonna happen. Unless you have slugs, which we don't," Simon said as he showed Marceline how to load his other gun, a Browning hunting rifle. "Actually, scratch that - if you do manage to hit a deer with a slug out of a sawed off you just end up with a pile of venison confetti. Speaking from experience here."

"Then why did you take it hunting with you yesterday?" Marceline asked, pulling the hood of her sweatshirt up out of her fur coat and over her forehead to block the sun, then deciding to open the umbrella he'd given her. She slipped on a pair of huge black bug-eye sunglasses he'd also given her.

"Because I'm a forgetful old fart. Here, I''ll show you how to hold it," he said, handing her the rifle.

She shook her head. "Naw, that's okay. I don't need it."

He gave a crooked smile. "What? Too painfully glamorous to hold a shotgun?"

"Huh?"

"You, right now. The fur coat and sunglasses and parasol. You look like you got lost on the way to a movie opening."

She grinned. "Girl, I am a Vampire _Queen,_" she said, turning in midair like a ghostly model, flipping her hair. "I _breathe_ fabulous."

Simon laughed. "So I see! But you won't be breathing at all if a monster gets you, so you should learn how to shoot a gun."

"I don't need a _gun _to defend myself, Simon."

"Is that so?" he replied indulgently.

"Nope," Marceline replied, then cocked her head violently to the side and grinned her most unnerving rictus grin, extending her fangs out just a touch, distorting her face so her smile was just a bit too large to be quite right. It had the desired effect - Simon flinched, gasped, a hand flying to his chest. She laughed, enlarging her mouth a bit more, letting her eyes glow every so slightly red.

"Okay, okay, you can stop now, you successfully scared the crap out of me. Go back to normal, please."

She complied, smirking.

He caught his breath. "Jesus wept, woman."

"Just sayin', you don't have to worry about me," she said, batting her eyelashes and floating off down the path.

"Hmm. We'll see. It takes a lot more than scary faces to deal with some of the things that live in that forest," he said, and cocked the rifle.

"You coming or not?" she called over her shoulder.

**000**

"What have you been doing all this time?" Marceline asked.

She and Simon knelt behind a bush. She floated a few inches about the ground, legs crossed, hunched beneath her twirling umbrella, bored. Simon lay on his stomach like a sniper, the barrel of the rifle pushed through the bush, peering through the scope. When she spoke he held up one finger, motioning for silence.

"See something?" she whispered.

He was quiet for a moment, concentrating. After a second he made a discouraged sound, "No. Nothing I want to eat, anyway."

"What is it?'

"Have a look," he said, and moved over so she could look through the scope. She lay down next to him, pressed fast against his side, and looked through the crosshairs.

"What is that thing?" she asked. A slimy greygreen lump the size of a child flopped and grunted around in a mossy thicket, turning round and round, pushing the dirt and leaves and branches this way and that.

"I call them shluppies," he said. "They're pretty stupid, but not usually dangerous unless the mama is around."

"How do you know when the mama's around?"

"Oh, you'll know," he said grimly.

It began to stiffen and vibrate back and forth. "What's it _doing?_" she asked.

"Who knows," Simon replied. "They'll just wiggle around in one place like that for hours. By the time they're done nothings left but a patch of dirt, and it takes a long time until anything grows there again. I think they're feeding on the plant life and nutrients in the soil, but who knows. I don't really look for logic or sense in my irradiated mutants."

She shifted to allow him access to the rifle. "Probably a good move," she said and yawned.

He sighed and stroked her hair. "I think we'll be here a while, darling. That's hunting life."

She smiled. "It's all right. Not like I have anything better to do."

"No? No rock shows to go to? Boys to date?"

"Well there is that movie opening, but I got lost."

"Hmm," Simon said, smiling mischievously. "Well, Hollywood is about six miles that way. Think you can walk it?"

"Hollywood…that's where they used to make all the movies and stuff, right? Before?"

"Sure is. It's a _mess_ now."

"Isn't everything?"

"It's bad even for this. It's like … it's like all the heroin and junkies and hookers had a bunch of babies with wild boars and mack trucks."

Despite herself Marceline laughed. "The _fuck?_"

"That's what I said, and then I got the heck out of there." He sighed. "There's not much that's liveable anymore. Things mutate and change so fast, entire towns can become death traps overnight. You wake up one morning and the grass is trying to suck the skin off your body."

"Eeesh."

"The mall is the longest I've lived anywhere since this whole mess started."

"Yeah I was gonna ask, what have you been doing all this time?"

"Not much. Scavenging. Reading. Crazy loft parties with all the super hot models that want to date me, the usual."

She laughed. "Fuck yeah cuz. Simon goes hard. Party like a rock star," shes said, and fist-bumped him.

"Party like a _librarian_," he said. "I have an almost an entire Barnes and Noble's worth of books down there. I got so bored I even arranged them by ISBN number."

"ISB what number?"

"It's - wait, do you hear that?" he whispered.

"No…?"

"Shhh," he said, and peered through the scope again. "Oh, breadballs, would you look at that," he said. "That's a ten point buck if I ever saw one. Bit skinny but he'll do."

Trying her best to be quiet, Marceline peeked through the leaves. In the distance she saw the silhouette of a majestic deer, its antlered head lifted, sniffing the wind.

"How did it even survive out here?" she whispered.

"I don't know but I'm glad it did, that big boy's food for months. Oh, breadballs," he said, taking a deep breath. "I've got a clear shot. Here goes nothing," he said, and fired.

The shot rang out, loud and crisp in the frigid air. The deer jerked forward, stumbling.

"_Shit_," Simon said, and fired again. This time it half the deer's skull exploded in a red mist.

"Yes!" he cheered. "You must be a good luck charm, Marcy. That's the quickest I've… ever …. " His voice faded as he watched the deer through the scope.

"Simon - why isn't it - "

"I don't know," he whispered back.

The mostly headless deer did not fall over and die the way a headless deer should. Instead it stuttered and stumbled, gradually turning towards them with jerking steps, the flesh of it's face and bits of brain hanging, dripping. After a second the flesh rippled, distorted, and broke open, allowing something pale and slimy and yellowish to wriggle out.

"Mother_,_" Simon said. "Mother mother mother -"

The pale thing suddenly doubled, then tripled in size, grew a mouth and fangs, roared, and headed straight for them. Using all his weight Simon shoved Marceline into the brush.

"Hey!"

"Stay here!" he ordered her.

"Simon -!"

He got up and sprinted from her, waving his hands in the air. "Hey! Hey ugly! I'm over here!" he shouted, leading it away from Marceline. The thing grunted and changed course, charging for Simon, who tore the crown from his belt and lifted it towards his head.

"Oh, _hell_ no," Marceline said, then floated over the bush, mutating and growing herself, pressing her body outward into an eight-limbed monstrosity with a huge, roaring, vertical mouth of sharp teeth, acid spittle, and flaming eye sockets. She reared up and over Simon's head, knocking the crown out of his hands, and ran the slimy yellow thing down, searing it with tentacles of demonic fire. It sank it's fangs into her leg and she bellowed in beastly rage, using her weight to drive it its teeth down into its own throat, then into the ground, stomping and stabbing it until it was little but pale, pus-colored pulp.

Gradually Marceline faded down into her normal form, but continued kicking at the dead thing, her coat and boots splashed with yellow. "Take _that!_ You wanna mess with _him_ you're gonna go through _me!_ _And that goes for the rest of you!_" she screamed out at the forest, her voice orders of magnitude louder than it should have been, her hair floating about her head in writhing tentacles. "_I_ am the Vampire _Queen_, and this dominion is now _MINE!_ Harm my King and you will pay with your life! Challenge me and I will burn your forest to the ground! Is. **THAT**. _**UNDERSTOOD!**_"

She stood there panting, the forest having fallen deathly silent around her. There was not so much a rustle of leaves or a chirping insect. It was as though a thick blanket of soundlessness had dropped from the sky, muting everything utterly.

Marceline straightened, nodding once. "Thought so," she said, then turned to face Simon. "You okay?"

Simon started at her in utter astonishment, his shoulders slumped, his crown still on the ground where she'd knocked it from his hand. He looked at her but didn't quite seem to register her. He looked as though he saw something too astounding and magnificent to make sense of. He blinked, tried to speak, but produced nothing.

"Hey," she said. "Simon? You okay?"

"… I - "

She gave him a crooked smile. "You all there?"

"No. I -" he finally looked at her, seemed to see her. "_Marceline._" He pressed his hand gently to her face in utter astonishment, flinching slightly as he made contact, as though he didn't quite expect her to be real. "_Marceline," _he whispered, as though saying her name for the first time.

"That's what they call me," she said, taking his hand. "Come on, Simon. Let's take you home."

He shook his head, staring in wonder.

"Take me anywhere," he breathed.

**000**


	6. vandalism is life

**chapter six**

**vandalism is life**

"I'm pretty certain I'm fucking this all up," Marceline said.

"It's beans," he said.

"Yeah, but - they're -I mean I can't _taste_ things anymore, I can't season this for you, salt just tastes like metal to me now, and pepper is like _acid, _and I don't even remember how basil is supposed to taste_._"

"It's okay Marcy, I'll take over."

"No! You don't feel good!"

"I'm fine now," he said, rising from the couch. "I was just a little shellshocked."

She gave him a skeptical look.

"I'm fine," he said, taking the wooden spoon from her, kissing her softly on the temple, just at her hairline. Her eyelids fluttered and she gave a reluctant little smile before surrendering the hot plate.

"Scary _deer_," she said teasingly.

"Scary _Marceline_. But thank you all the same."

"No problem. Sometimes you just have to show 'em who's boss," she said, plopping down on the couch and lifting an old TIME magazine to her mouth, draining the title and border. "Hey," she said after a moment, "do you have a guitar anywhere?"

"A guitar? What for?"

She rolled her eyes. "For scrubbing the toilet, what do you think?"

"You play?"

The question momentarily jarred her, because she felt he should have known the answer already, but how could he? He hadn't seen her since she was seven, after all. There were a lot of things he didn't know about her as an adult.

"Hmmm. I don't think I brought one down, but there might be one in the mall somewhere. It's a huge mall, still a lot in it. People were mostly after food and medicine and survival gear after the hit, not guitars." He sighed. "Maybe they would have come back for other things if they'd survived, but the radiation sickness killed whoever lived through the initial blast within weeks." His eyes went hazy with memory, a soldier's thousand yard stare.

Wow," she said softly. "That must have been awful to see."

"It was," he said, slowly stirring the pot of beans. "I've never felt more useless. People dying slowly all around me, and I couldn't do anything to help. " He shook his head. "But I tried."

"What did you do?"

"I prayed."

"You prayed?"

He nodded. "A lot of people mistook me for a priest. I don't know, the beard, the book maybe. People were sick. Hallucinating. So if I was asked to deliver last rights, I did. It seemed to bring them comfort and it was the least I could do. But it wasn't long until I was walking in a graveyard wherever I went. Bodies, just … everywhere."

"Do you think anyone else survived?"

"I don't know. I haven't seen anything human since. Maybe far from the cities there are still some people, but I can't be too sure. Whatever the nukes didn't get the biological weapons did. But I suppose if there were people isolated enough they could still be alive."

"Biological weapons?"

"Weaponized viruses."

Her eyes widened. "_Eeeesh_. What were they so pissed off about that they had to do that?"

"I don't even remember. Most likely money."

"Money?"

He nodded. "That's the root cause of most wars. They'll say it's for religion or freedom or human rights, but when it comes down to it, its always money."

"That's pretty lame."

He poured the beans into a bowl and sat at the table. "Yes. Yes it is. Humans are … lame. This sort of thing was probably inevitable. It's for the best, maybe." He sighed heavily. "But I could just be saying that because I survived. I have a warm home and food and good company. And I'll get to see whatever happens next." He stirred the beans to cool them. "Tell me about Ooo, Marcy."

Her eyebrows raised. "That's kind of a tall order. Could you narrow it down a tad? Like what specifically do you want to know?"

He considered this. "Are there republicans?"

"What's a republican?"

"_What's a republican,_" he repeated, and smiled. "That's one of the most beautiful phrases I've ever heard."

**000**

Simon handed Marceline a golf club, a heavy driver.

"What's this for?"

"Protection."

"Simon, I don't -"

"Marcy please. I know you don't need it but just … humor me. If you won't take the gun take something. Things live in the mall. Mostly shluppies and other harmless things, but every so often you get a trash monster or carnivorous pair of pants."

"Seriously? Cool."

"It's not cool when they're chewing off your limbs," he muttered, loading the sawed off shotgun and slinging it over his back. "Come on. Follow me. And stay sharp."

They went up the stairwell and through a door that was heavily bolted and chained, work which Simon clearly did himself. It took him a full three minutes to open the door, and when they were on the other side he shoved a wooden plank through the handles to keep anything getting in while they scavenged.

The mall looked different during the day, less intimidating. It was a four floor structure of marble title. Huge terraced glass ceilings sent beams of light down through the floating dust, beams which Marceline artfully dodged. It looked almost palatial, though abandoned, full of stopped escalators and old wreckage. They paused at a map behind a glass case. The dusty surface bore Simon's handprints, drawn out in sweeping motions from the last time he'd wiped the dust off.

"We are here," Simon said, pointing at a red star by a purple section marked "food court." "Let's see what the index says. M, M, M …. Ah. Magnolia, Mandlebrot's Games - oh, Mandlebrot's used to be fun - Manny's Hair Salon … there! Music Masters! Third floor, east wing R. Let's go see what they've got."

As they made their way up to the music store Simon seemed to calm. Marceline couldn't hear or smell anything threatening, nor did she feel any dangerous presences, and he didn't seem to either. That said she knew not to be overly certain that her warning to the denizens of the forest had taken. Sometimes it took two or three displays of power to get a region under control. She wasn't expecting a problem, however. She was, after all, her father's daughter.

"Ah, here it is," he said, stopping by a shuttered shop.

"Gate's down," Marceline said.

"Not for long. Hand me the club," he said. He took it firmly in hand, aimed it carefully at the latch that kept the gate bolted to the floor, too a deep breath, and swung with all his might. The latch popped neatly off.

"Been working on my swing," he said, handing her the club.

"Tsk tsk. Vandalism is wrong, Simon."

"Heh. Vandalism is _life, _these days." With a grunt he pushed the gate up to reveal two display windows, in which were brand-new guitars, both electric and acoustic, leaned fetchingly against amps and drum sets.

Marceline's eyes went wide. "Oh, _wow._"

"Go on ," Simon said, chucking. "Help yourself."

She floated through the shop in a daze. There was an entire wall of guitars of all types, even heavy steel ones with a sharp twang. Ukeleles, violins, drums, even harps where displayed lovingly between psychedelic posters and tibetan prayer flags. Another wall bore a floor-to-ceiling display of sheet music, and another a brightly colored graphic of Jimmy Hendrix crouched over a flaming guitar.

"I don't even know where to begin," Marceline breathed.

"Take whatever you want now and come back for others later, they're not going anywhere," he said, chuckling. He stopped to study the wall of sheet music. "For all intents and purposes, this is your closet. Come and go as you please."

Marceline's hand flew to her chest. "Seriously?"

"Yep. You all right?' Simon asked.

"Yeah … yeah, I'm just having a tiny heart attack, I'll be okay."

"Aw," Simon cooed, and briefly squeezed her floating foot. "Go nuts."

After careful deliberation she chose an acoustic Spanish guitar lacquered a deep rich red, painted with flames and intricately detailed Mexican sugar skulls. Simon chose items for himself as well, a drum set which he piled onto a dolly he found in the shop's back room, and a big pile of sheet music books. Marceline found a carrying case for her guitar and slung it on her back, then helped Simon get the dolly of drums back down to the basement. It was a careful operation but they managed, and spent the rest of the evening re-arranging the living room, unwrapping their new toys like excited children.

"Oh you got the blue ones!" she said as he opened the first box to reveal a blue brushed steel bass drum.

"Blue drums for the blue guy!" he said. "This is a DW Collector's series. Never in my _life_ did I think I could get my hands on something like this."

"It's been up there the whole time, why didn't you just go get it?"

His brow furrowed. "I don't know. I probably should have. I guess music hasn't been foremost on my mind. I just focus on getting through each day, really. You get into a pattern." He smiled up at her. "But now that you're here I have someone to play with!"

Marceline grinned. "Yay! What kind of stuff do you want to play?""

"Well I got these," he said excitedly, handing her the books of sheet music. In one pile was _Pink Floyd, Janis Joplin, _and _Amy Winehouse. _In the other was _Radiohead, The Best of Monty Python, _and_The Black Keys_. "Do you know any of these? No? Well, no, you wouldn't, would you? But they're all great. Amy Winehouse died of a drug overdose, very sad. So did Janis Joplin, come to think of it."

Marceline shrugged. "That's rock stars for you."

"I see some things never change."

"Nope, guess not. These books are cool, but what about your own stuff?"

Simon paused. "My … own stuff?"

"Yeah, you write music."

"Oh. Well. None of it's really any good.

"What! Yes it is! You wrote great songs."

He looked coyly at the floor. "That was when you were very young Marcy, I'm sure your memory's a lot better than the reality. Nothing I came up with holds a candle to your songs."

"How do you know I write songs?"

"You look too beautiful holding that guitar not to."

Marceline gave a gradual, crooked smile and blushed hotly, looking at the floor. "Thank you."

"I, uh … sorry."

"No - it's - thank you. You look good. Too. You look different than how I remember you."

He waved a hand dismissively. "I'm old."

"No, you're really handsome," she blurted.

Simon looked momentarily stunned, then laughed uneasily, running a hand though his hair. His face reddened. "Well. Thank you, Marcy."

"Well. You know. You're. Yeah," she said with a nervous laugh.

"You're sweet," he said softly.

There was a moment of thick silence. Simon turned to the drum set and took intensive interest in it. "Did, uh … did you see where I put that hi-hat clamp?"

"I think it's over here," Marceline said, diving over-eagerly towards the dolly.

"Nevermind, found it," he said, and went about attaching it.

"Okay good. Well. I'm gonna take a look at these books," she said, and floated down to the floor. "Which one should I start with?"

"My choice? Pink Floyd."

She opened it. "Which song?"

_"Wish You Were Here,_" he said immediately.

"Good song?"

He glanced over his shoulder. "My favorite song."

"Oh," she said. "I see."

She turned to the page, flattening the book against the floor, and started to tune her guitar. She studied the notes, gradually plucking and tuning her way through the basic structure.

"_We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl,_" she whisper-sung beneath her breath, "_year after year._"

She glanced up at Simon. He was examining the directions for the drum set, but he smiled whenever he heard her voice.

She flipped back to the beginning of the song, going through it once again.

She wanted to play it perfectly.

**000**


	7. in a freshly dusted mirror

**chapter seven**

**in a freshly dusted mirror**

When she floated into Simon's bedroom and pushed the huge steel door almost-shut for the night, she saw that he'd laid out two pairs of pajamas on the bed. They were brand new, still with tags. One was decorated with bats and baseballs, the other with little dancing penguins. Chuckling she selected the penguin set and got into his bed, pulling the covers up to her chin. She closed her eyes and tried to relax, but found that she was nowhere near hovering. When Marceline slept she always started out in the bed properly. She began to hover an inch or so just as she drifted off, then slowly ascend about a foot during the course of the night. She'd slept that way since becoming a vampire and was used to it, though she often wondered if that was why the vampires of old supposedly slept in coffins - not so much to avoid the light of day but to stay in one place.

She sighed fitfully, couldn't get comfortable. The fabric of the new pajamas was starchy and unpleasant on her skin. She considered putting her underpants and tube top back on, but truth be told they needed a wash and the thought grossed her out. After a moment's hesitation she went to Simon's closet and opened the dresser. She found a t shirt and a pair of pajama bottoms, too big for her but clean and soft and well-used, and slipped them on. As the shirt passed over her face a delicious sort of feeling came over her, akin to wrapping oneself in a blanket still warm from the dryer. All she needed now was something to tie her hair back.

She hesitantly opened the top drawer to reveal several notebooks, a broken watch, some smooth pond stones with words carved into them, and a dusty picture frame placed face-down. Guiltily, knowing she shouldn't, she turned the frame over.

It was a photograph of a young man and woman sitting at a table, leaning towards one another, hands clasped as they smiled at the camera. The man was dark skinned with longish dark hair and glasses, and the woman a bespectacled redhead in a white dress. Marceline had seen this photo before. Simon used to take it from his pack late at night when he thought she was sleeping. One night she asked about it before he had time to stow it away.

"Well, that's me, as a young man. A long time ago."

"Who's that?" she asked, pointing her chubby finger at the woman.

"That's Betty."

Marceline studied the picture. "You're holding hands."

"Yes. I liked to hold her hand. I loved her very much."

"Oh," she said. "Why aren't you with her?"

He glanced at the crown. "It's a long story, sweetheart."

"Did she die because of the bombs?"

He grimaced. "I - I don't know, sweetie," he said, but his face told a different story. He put the picture away, gave her a squeeze and kissed the top of her head. "Come on pumpkin, back to to bed."

Now as Marceline studied the mousy woman in the photo a strange feeling rose up in her. Mixed in with guilt for violating Simon's privacy there was a hint, a twinge, of something else. The same weird feeling she got back home whenever Ice King mentioned Princess Bubblegum.

She shook her head, putting it out of her mind. _You shouldn't be snooping around in Simon's stuff anyway, you jerk_, she thought to herself as she put the frame back where she found it, face down. This time she noticed something written on the back in neat, educated script.

_Behold, we know not anything;_

_I can but trust that good shall fall_

_At last – far off – at last to all,_

_And every winter change to spring._ _So runs my dream; but who am I?_

Her brow furrowed. _What the heck does that mean?_

There was a folded piece of yellowish paper tucked into the corner of the frame. Figuring if she was going to snoop she may as well snoop all the way, she gently coaxed the slip of paper free and unfolded it to find a poem which had been torn from a book long ago.

_Oh yet we trust that somehow good_

_Will be the final goal of ill,_

_To pangs of nature, sins of will,_

_Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;_

_That nothing walks with aimless feet;_

_That not one life will be destroy'd,_

_Or cast as rubbish to the void,_

_When God hath made the pile complete;_

_That not a worm is cloven in vain;_

_That not a moth with vain desire_

_Is shrivell'd in a fruitless fire,_

_Or but subserves another gain._

_Behold, we know not anything;_

_I can but trust that good shall fall_

_At last – far off – at last to all,_

_And every winter change to spring._

_So runs my dream; but who am I?_

_An infant crying in the night;_

_An infant crying for the light,_

_And with no language, but a cry._

She covered her mouth.

"Oh glob," Marceline whispered to herself. "Oh, Simon."

She folded the slip of paper, put it back in the frame, and shut the dresser drawer. She got back into his bed but felt too restless to sleep. After fifteen minutes she rose, pushed the thick steel door open, and floated quietly to the living room. Simon was fast asleep on the couch, his glasses still on and a book about famous drummers laying open on his chest.

She took the book and dogeared the page he was on. She placed it on the coffee table next to the crown, then took his glasses off. Gently as she could she untied his shoes and slipped them off, then covered him with a blanket. She gazed down at his sleeping face for a moment, so peaceful, his mind blissfully untwisted by the crown in sleep.

_So runs my dream; but who am I?_

_I'm so sorry Simon_, she thought, stroking his hair. _It must be so hard_. She looked at him a moment longer, then leaned down and pressed her lips warmly to his forehead.

He smiled. "Mm," he sighed, then rolled onto his side towards the wall. She smirked and pulled the blanket back up over his shoulder. She drew his long white hair away from his face, tucking it behind his ear, and gently stroked his cheek. "Mm," he sighed again. He reached up, took her hand, and, still mostly asleep, pressed the backs of her fingers to his lips and held them there.

Marceline gasped softly in surprise. The warm gentle pressure of his lips and mustache, of his soft breath on her knuckles was dreamlike. She felt a sudden and intense urge to lie down with him, to press herself to his sleeping back. After a lingering moment he drifted back to sleep, releasing her hand.

Breathless she floated back to his room, her heart pounding. She slid into his bed, into the sheets which bore his scent. She felt oddly airy, anxious. She took a pillow and hugged it into her chest in an attempt to soothe the butterflies, then wrapped her legs around it as well. She pressed her face into the pillow, inhaled deeply, and reached in vain for sleep.

**000**

Sleep did not come.

At five thirty she finally gave up. She decided she may as well get up and get dressed, which was when she realized that she had no clean clothes to change into - no clothes at all, for that matter, save what she'd worn when Prismo blasted her back in time. She slipped the fur coat over Simon's pajamas and floated silently into the living room, where she found a pen and paper.

_Simon -_

_I'm here, just doing some shopping upstairs. I need clothes._

_Don't worry about me, I'll be fine. I even took the golf club._

_Humoring You -_

_Marcy 3_

She left the note next to his glasses, grabbed the driver from where it rested against the kitchen table, and went on her way.

**000**

It was about nine thirty in the morning when she came dancing back to the basement bearing totes filled with dresses, pants, boots, and underthings. Simon wasn't on the couch and the remains of a bowl of grits still sat on the kitchen table. She floated past this and back into Simon's room, where she hung up her coat and laid her new things out on the bed.

"So much cute _shit!_" she squealed to herself. She'd spent a good hour wandering around the mall looking for a shop that appealed to her, waiting until it was light enough to make educated choices. Just as it grew light enough to see properly she stumbled upon a store with a curious name: ANTHROPOLOGIE. The window displays interested her enough to attempt to break the security gate with the club the way Simon had, but that swing was far harder than it looked. Eventually she simply breathed some fire and melted the lock away, rolled the gate up, and floated inside.

It was like being in a combination of a treasure chest and an old woman's attic, which tickled her, though on first look she found the clothes and bit too twee and lacey for her tastes. Some of the items looked like things Princess Bubblegum might have liked, which filled her with the feelings of fondness, sadness, and regret with which she'd long associated the Princess. It was curious how, even after all this time and all that trouble, she still had the impulse to gift her anything she saw which she thought Bubblegum might like. Marceline sighed, letting the powder pink and baby blue lace crop top which brought her to mind fall to the floor.

As the morning sun began to dapple through the mottled glass windows the inventory began to grow on her. There was a sweet sort of romance to it that she was surprised to find herself enchanted by. She began to pick out dresses and scarves and boots, holding them against herself in a freshly dusted mirror, smiling when she thought about how Simon would react when he saw her in this or that dress or top. The oddness of that particular imagining prickled at her - she hadn't much considered anyone else's opinions on her clothing since she'd been trying to gain Ash's attention - but she pushed it aside for the sake of the fun of shopping without having to consider the cost of anything.

She decided to wear her favorite items, an intricately patterned red, blue, tan, and yellow dress covered in damasks and paisleys, a thin studded belt, leggings, a cute little bat necklace, and her red leather cowboy boots. She looked in the mirror and smiled.

"Marcy? You back?" Simon called from down the hall.

She floated out to greet him. He was in a terrycloth robe, his wet white hair clinging to his scalp. His face brightened when he saw her, just as she imagined it would. She held the skirt out slightly, turning in midair for him. "What do you think?"

"Lovely!" he said. "Glad you found something you liked!"

"Oh I found more than this, there's like piles in there."

He chuckled. "Don't max out the credit card. If you're done in there for the moment I'm just gonna hop in there and grab some clothes and we can get on our way."

"Where are we going?"

"Hunting! Maybe some gathering too, there's wild cabbage and broccoli coming into season about now." he said from behind the safe door. "We didn't manage to nab anything yesterday and I'm down to beans and grits. If I don't get some vitamins in me I'll get … I don't know, scurvy or something."

She chuckled. "Okay," she said, and went to the living room to play her guitar and wait for him.

"You really weren't lying about piles of stuff," he as he strode into the living room. He stopped short when he saw her.

"What?" Marcy asked. She'd arranged herself just so, muting the voice in her head that asked what, exactly, she thought she was doing by leaning slightly over the guitar to give a favorable angle to her chest, one side of her skirt pushed slightly further up her thigh than it needed to be, her thick black hair cascading down around her shoulders and waist. She gave him a little half smile and cast her eyes back down to her guitar, tuning it.

He looked bewitched.

She liked this, she was finding. Despite herself she liked feeding this odd impulse. She liked the way her heart sped up when Simon shook his head, a smile in his eyes, and softly said, "Nothing."

She liked knowing he was lying.

**000**


	8. her inner animal grinned

**chapter eight**

**her inner animal grinned**

Simon chuckled. Sighed. "I used to get into trouble."

They were staked out in the forest awaiting game, but there been no sign of anything for hours. Simon expended most of his ammo on a doe that was too quick for him, and had grown discouraged. They passed a small flask of whiskey back and forth.

"Alcohol affects you?" he asked.

"Hard stuff does, yeah," she said, taking a swig and wincing. "It's weird. The red from red wine will get me a little tipsy, but not a lot. Beer or cider doesn't do anything even if it is red. But vodka or whiskey? Even it's perfectly clear but I can still get hammered. I don't really understand it, but. I mean. I'll take it."

He nodded. "Helps take the edge off the monotony of hunting." He took a swig. "I used to listen to books on tape out here when I still had enough batteries to waste."

"Nevermind that, tell me more about the trouble you used to get into."

"Oh god," he said. "I never should have brought it up."

"Too late. Tell stories."

"Fine. But you can't tell anyone."

"Pff, who am I gonna tell? Hey Tree! You will not BELIEVE what Simon did once while he had the crown on!"

"Trees are terrible gossips."

"I know. Dumb bitches." She pointed an accusing finger at a nearby oak. "Mind your own business cunt."

Simon winced. "Wowzers. Dropping the C hammer and it's not even noon."

"Sorry. Cover your ears Simon."

"Now you tell me."

She nudged him him her foot. "Tell stories."

He smiled and shook his head, chuckling. "Well let's see. I woke up in jail a few times."

"Ha! For what?"

"Various. Public drunkenness a few times. Fighting. Apparently I punched a guy, or… I … I don't remember. They said I was, and I quote, trying to 'take' his girlfriend."

Marceline jerked forward with laughter, holding her hand to her mouth so she didn't spit out her whiskey. "Oh, I believe it."

"That's the thing that so bizarre about this, I remember the aftermath once the crown was off but I don't remember the actual event."

"How did the cops even catch you if you had your powers?"

He shrugged. "No idea. I must have cooperated. Or maybe I was just too drunk to fight back. There were times when I would wake up after three days completely wrecked, no idea what I did, but with this just _decimating_ hangover. Woke up on a tour bus in Oaxaca once. No idea. I would have liked to remember that one." He took another sip of whiskey. "There's a few I would have liked to remember."

"Like what?"

He laughed uneasily. Hesitated. "I … probably shouldn't tell you."

She rolled her eyes. "Dude, I have seen some _shit_. You can tell me. I'm not seven anymore."

"Oh, I am well aware_, believe me,_" he said. "Fine. Well. I uh … one time, I - " he shook his head, blushing fiercely.

"Come onnnn!"

"Okay, okay. Well. This was right as the war started. I think. People were sort of, I don't know … gallows partying? I suppose? No one knew what was going to happen with the war, but we were all fairly certain it wasn't going to be good. So, you know…" he shrugged, "may as well have a good time while you still can." His brow furrowed. "I seem to recall I was pretty upset about something at the time. I'm … I don't remember. Something personal."

"Betty?"

He blinked. "Who?"

"Your fiancee?"

"Oh! Oh …_wowzers_, Simon. How did I - oh, _wow_." He held his hand to his forehead. "That's … that's actually pretty disturbing, that I could forget about her."

"You didn't forget. I mentioned her name and it came right back."

He shook his head. "No, I forgot. Well. Comparatively speaking. God. I used to think about her every minute of every day, Marcy. For _years_. I don't think it stopped until after the war, when I was just trying to survive. Until I found you. She's not someone I ever thought I'd need to ask 'who' about."

Marceline considered this. "Maybe it's a good thing, then."

He gave her a sharp look.

"I mean to forget something that caused you so much pain," she said.

"No," he said immediately. "No. Forgetting the things in your life that made you who you are is not a good thing, no matter how painful."

"Don't know if I agree. There's one or two people I wish I could forget."

He cocked his head. "Oh?"

"Yeah." She shrugged. "We all have 'em. But that's off the subject, back to gallows partying."

"Right. Okay." He took another swig off the flask and handed it back to Marceline. "So. Yes. I remember a bit previous to putting the crown on. I was at home. Already drinking, god. I drank a lot in those days. Sometimes - well - it … talks to me. The crown, I mean. Not in words but in urges. Sometimes it just wants me to put it on, to live through me, and back then when I didn't have anything else to lose, I'd give in. Why not? I'd lost Betty, I'd lost my tenure at the university, World War Three was starting … you know."

She nodded.

"So I put it on, headed out to a club - I must have ended up, I don't know, but… I mean I've never been good with women, I don't know how in the hell I managed it, but - " he trailed off, smirking in what almost looked like pride - "I … well, I woke up in a hotel room in bed with two women."

"What!"

His face was flushed but he laughed. "Yeah. I mean, _me_. _This_," he said, pointing to himself. "Blue skinned weirdo with the crown and the beard. It's not like I had looks on my side, I haven't the slightest idea how I even…" he trailed off, shaking his head.

Despite herself Marceline's mind was filled with images. Her breath quickened. "And you don't remember any of it?"

He shook his head. "Not a damn thing."

"Ha! Awwww! Poor Simon! That sucks, dude."

"It does."

"It was probably totally awesome too."

He nodded. "Probably. Though that's never really been my … it's not something I ever wanted, really."

"I thought all guys wanted that."

He shrugged and shook his head. "Not all. Not to say I'd mind having those memories back, though. But hey, it wasn't a total loss, a week later one of them emailed me pictures."

Her eyes went wide. "What, of like -"

"No! No no. Of events previous to that. Things that will really damage my future political career."

She interlaced her fingers. "_Go on_."

He shrugged. "Mostly just … well, bottles. And … me with some gangster-looking gentlemen, in a limo, passing the crown around. Lots of pictures of me with the girls in question…" he said, squirming, "…doing lines off coke off … things. And people."

"What's a line of coke?"

Simon considered this. "So in Ooo there's no republicans and no cocaine? Well. Guess that figures."

"What is it?"

"It's a drug."

"What's it do?"

He shrugged. "Beats me, kiddo. I don't remember any of it."

"Hm. Were the girls hot at least?"

He smiled. "They were."

She chuckled. "Wow … so before the war whenever you put the crown on you turned into the Party God?"

He shook his head. "Not every situation I woke up in was so glamorous, but, hey, I guess I'll take what I can get. Or more _it_ took what _it_ could get," he said, jerking his head towards the crown. "I didn't seem to have much say in the matter."

"Remind me to tell future-you that story, you'd flip," she said, taking a swig and passing the flask back to Simon.

"No more of that for future-me, then?"

"Nope. Not for lack of trying, though."

He considered this. "I … don't think I like the implications of that."

"Aw, it's okay!" Marceline said. "You're kind of a pain, but you're a lovable old perv."

His face went bright red. "Are you talking about then or now?" he asked under his breath.

"What?"

"Nothing. So. I told you stories, now you tell me some."

Marceline moaned. "Do I have to?"

"Yes," Simon said, firmly enough to make her laugh. "You said you'd met people who you'd rather forget. Start there."

She winced. "Oof, go directly for the jugular, why don't you?"

He shrugged. "You'd know, y_ou're_ the vampire."

"Hurka durka durr, I see what you did there, Simon."

"Thanks, I'm here all week."

She rolled her eyes. "Okay, well…one is Ash. This jerk I dated."

"I see."

"Yeah, I mean … there's not a lot to it really. He was really hot, and really talented - like, I'll give him that, he could really play the living shit out of lead guitar. He was a way better guitarist than I'll ever be, if I'm, like, honest with myself. He taught me most of what I know on bass. The jerk."

"Why was he a jerk?"

"He just …" she shook her head. Shrugged. "He was a dick. I don't know. He treated me like crap, you know? He didn't value me at all, he just sorta … like he was the big rock star or whatever, and I was the groupie, and the worst part is I just ate it up. Like an _idiot_. Like … he had this way of like … making me feel like I should just be so fucking grateful for any little shred of attention he'd give me. And I just sat there like a dog, waiting for it. I'd do anything for that asshole," she sighed. "I was so stupid."

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have made you talk about this," Simon said softly.

"No, it's okay. It's actually kind of nice to talk about it. I don't really have a lot of people I can talk to about stuff like this. It's sorta … like you said, the stuff that makes you who you are."

He nodded.

"Anyway, with Ash, I finally broke it off when he -" she stopped short and looked up at Simon, remembering what she would have to admit to him. Her eyes welled.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Simon said, leaning forward to take her in his arms, pressing her head to his chest. "Hey. Hey now, sweetie. Come on, it's really okay, you don't - "

"He sold Hambo," she said into his shirt. "I'm so sorry. I still feel so awful about it."

"_What?_"

"Yeah."

"That unbelievable son of a bitch."

She laughed and wiped her eyes. "Its okay. Next time I saw him I kicked him right in the crotch.""

"Good, or I would have done it for you,."

"You're gonna be waiting a few hundred years, he has to be born first."

"Oh I'm marking it down in my calendar. Kapow! Jerk won't know what hit him, just you wait." He kissed the part of her hair. She sighed at the contact.

"You know what the worst part of it is?" she asked.

"Hm?"

"Deep down, like, somewhere … part of me still loves him."

"Ohh," he said, holding her closer, resting his chin on the top of her head. "That doesn't surprise me sweetie. I think once you love someone that feeling never goes away completely."

"Guess not," she said. She sighed, closed her eyes, and leaned into him. "Why are you so nice?"

He shrugged. "How my mom raised me."

"Well she did a good job," she said, looking up at him. "You're like … perfect."

He met her eyes and smiled. "You're pretty great yourself," he said softly.

They gazed for one another for a lingering moment, until Marceline suddenly straightened, eyes going wide, her pupils dilating. She turned, scanning the forest.

"What is it?" Simon asked.

"It's nearby," Marceline said.

"What is?" Simon asked alarmed, reaching for the rifle.

"Shhh," she said. "A deer. I can _smell_ it." She paused for a moment, then lifted her arm and pointed east. "Over there. Fifty feet maybe."

Simon disengaged from her, peeking through the bushed. "_Jesus_," he said. "You're dead on, Marcy. That's a hell of a trick." He braced the rifle against his shoulder, aimed, and fired. There was a wail and a crash through the brush. "Breadballs, got it in the leg!"

Marcy peered over his head and saw the stumbling deer, most of it's right front leg missing, the scent of blood filling the air. Marceline's eyelids fluttered.

Simon cocked the rifle and fired again. The bullet struck in the haunches. It stumbled and fell.

"Oh, dammit. Oh, breadballs."

"What? You got it."

He shook his head. "Yes, but it isn't dead, and I'm out of bullets."

She watched the deer writhe in pain. "Oh."

"It'll take hours to die this way," he said, frantically checking his pack for any ammo he may have missed. When he found none he looked back at the deer, grimacing. "Oh hell, it's just terrified and suffering. Breadballs, I hate it when this happens, I don't want to cause it pain, I -"

"It's okay," Marceline said, her eyes gone wet, the alcohol blooming warmly in her chest, the blood in the air making her salivate. "I got it."

"What?"

She rose to her feet and walked towards the frightened animal.

"Marcy!" Simon hissed form behind the bush. "Be careful!" When she showed no sign of slowing he crept out from behind the bush and followed her.

When she approached the deer it grew even more terrified, screeching and wailing, the whites of its eyes entirely visible. It kicked uselessly at the ground with the legs that still worked, waving its antlered head back and forth, blood gushing from the bullet wounds.

"Marcy!" Simon said.

"You know what I am, don't you?" Marceline said to the deer as she knelt beside it. She put her hand on its neck, and this seemed to inhibit its movement, though it was clearly still terrified by her.

"Marceline, what are you doing?" Simon hissed again.

She put her other hand on its neck. The deer lay down straight, clearly despite itself.

"I'm giving it the kindest death possible," Marceline said, shuddering in anticipation.

"What -?"

Marceline's vision went red. Her fangs extended. With a vicious, cold hiss, she dove and slammed her teeth into the buck's neck.

**000**

She came back to herself in the midst of a pleasure so great it was agony, her back arched, blood running down her chin and neck, her hands digging into the buck's hide as she writhed in wild, animal ecstasy. She gasped as the life of the buck's blood coursed through her, back and forth and back again, slamming her helplessly against the pure essence of the life it lived. She felt the sun that fed and plumped the grass upon which it fed, the pleasure of flying through the forest on long, nimble legs, of antlers breaking through velvet skin, of eating and sleeping and mating. All of this -years of wild life - slammed through Marceline's veins and organs and heart and brain. She was utterly lost to it, blind to the world as she writhed and moaned.

"Oh glob. Oh _glob_," she said as soon she she could speak, bracing herself against the buck, trembling as the throbbing slowly faded from her. She coughed, ejecting a bit of blood. She wiped her mouth and looked up and was startled to see Simon, whom she'd entirely forgotten about, watching her, sitting on the ground with his pack in his lap. His face was bright red and he looked as breathless as she felt, his eyes wide and shining, mouth slightly open. Her perception heightened by the blood, she could sense his heart slamming away in his chest, the dryness of his mouth, the dampness of his palms. She could smell the turbulent mix of fear and arousal coming off him, clear as day.

Her inner animal grinned. Grew predatory.

"M- Marcy?" Simon breathed. "Are you okay?"

Something about his voice brought her back to herself. She winced, shook her head, and the desirous animal suddenly left her. She caught her breath and slumped against the buck's stiff, drained body, still euphoric, but spent. "Yeah," she sighed. "Yeah I'm good." She glanced down to see her shirt covered in blood and clinging wetly to her breasts. "Oh glob," she said, closing her jacket around her, suddenly aware of the spectacle she must have been, helplessly mewling and writhing, covered in gore. "I -I'm sorry," she whispered. "I didn't know it would happen like that."

"Wow. That was … _wow_," Simon said. "So was that … good … for you?"

She glanced up at Simon again. He still looked utterly transfixed. A red heat of humiliation rose up in her. "I'm sorry," she said quickly, wishing she could melt into the ground. "It's been a few hundred years. I forgot - I forgot that - if - the longer you wait for actual blood the more - powerful - the more it gets you when you finally... I didn't - I mean the whiskey and - I forgot. I'm sorry."

"So when you said it was better than sex, _that's_ what you were talking about?" he breathed, his eyes wide, face flushed. "That looked amazing."

She drew the jacket up over her face. "Oh glob."

"Oh. Breadballs, sorry. I'm making you uncomfortable, I'm sorry."

"No, you're not, I'm fine," she whispered, burning. "I'm just - yeah. I'm sorry."

"What do you have to be sorry for? Hell, if … I mean … sorry, but there was something I could do that made me feel that good I'd do it all the time. You said it's been hundreds of years?"

She peeked up over the jacket. Nodded.

"How do you resist?" he asked, incredulous.

She laughed uneasily. "I, um. I want a social life."

"Huh?"

"The more blood you drink the more you want. It can get to the point where you can't control yourself, not even around people you love. So you can have blood or friends. Pick one."

"Oh," he said. "Am I in danger?"

She shook her head. "No. You're not … I don't smell it in you. I don't think you have it."

"Have what?"

"The type of blood I can ingest. You're not human enough anymore. I could turn you, but I couldn't subsist off you."

"Oh. Well that's a relief." He blinked. "Wait, _what?_"

**000**

Simon told Marcy to go on ahead of him and get cleaned up while he brought the deer back to the basement. She stripped off the blood covered clothes and stepped into the shower. Something about the hot water relaxed her enough to fully sink into the euphoria real blood brought her. She leaned against the shower wall in a blank, narcotic bliss. She didn't come out until she heard Simon banging around, struggling with something big and bulky. She wrapped her hair up in a towel and put on Simon's bathrobe, his warm masculine scent rippling through her, and went out to investigate.

Simon had the dead deer lashed to a dolly with twine, an awkward, bulky arrangement he had trouble wheeling through the hall. "Okay, so let me get this straight," he said as he pushed it past her down the hall, "I'm a turning into a _wizard?_"

"Um. Yeah," she said, following a few steps behind him.

"And a wizard isn't human?"

"Not as far as I know, no. Humans are humans and wizards are wizards, that's just how it works."

He stopped for a minute to catch his breath. "So - in one thousand years I'm going to be bluer, have a longer nose, long white hair and a beard, and I'm going to be a _wizard?_"

She nodded.

"Jesus Christ, I'm becoming Dumbledore."

"Who?"

"They don't have Harry Potter either, I take it?"

"…who?"

"Guess not. _Oof,_" he said as he resumed pushing the deer.

"Where are you taking him?" she asked.

"Storage. Gotta carve it up. Freeze it." She followed as he went down a hall, and then another, until they finally arrived at what had been an industrial kitchen. He grabbed a huge flashlight and wheeled the deer into the dark, then heaved it onto a table.

"Pleh," eh said, catching his breath. "I need to go wire the fuse box back up, get some light in here so I can butcher this sucker. Gotta do it soon, too. Usually I need to wait a day or do, hang it up and drain it, but you did that already. Have you ever taken an animal apart before?"

"No, but I remember watching you."

"Oh right," he said. "You always stomached that admirably for a little girl."

"That's how I roll. I'd be happy to help you do it," she said putting her hand on the buck's hide. "I know this creature inside and out, now."

He smiled at her. "That's really cool, Marcy." He paused. "Speaking of cool…" he said, turning. Behind him was a huge walk-in refrigerator, big enough to store a restaurant's worth of food. He opened it and sighed. "Yeah. So I figured."

"What?"

"It's only a little bit under room temperature in there. I'm going to have to refreeze it or the meat will spoil in a few days."

"Oh," she said, her brow furrowing. "How are you going to do that?"

"How do you think?"

She blinked. "What - you mean use the crown?"

"Only option," he said. "There's nowhere near enough power to run that freezer 24/7. I put on the crown and fill the entire thing with ice, seal it up, it stays cold for months."

"You've done this before?" she asked cautiously.

He nodded. "Yep. Last time I wore it was for this. About eight months ago."

"And you were able to take it right off again?"

He was silent for a long moment. "Well…"

"No?" Marceline asked.

"No," he replied quietly.

"Oh."

"But - actually - " he turned to her. "You know, it's good you're here. There's something I've wanted to try - something that might help me control it - but I didn't want to try it alone because I'm not sure what the effects will be. Here, come with me."

He took her hand, leading her out of the industrial kitchen and back down the hall to his bathroom, where he took a small reddish pill bottle from the medicine cabinet and handed it to her. ""I found it a couple years ago when I was rooting through a pharmacy."

"What is it?" she asked.

"It's called chlorpromazine hydrochloride," he said. "Thorazine."

**000**


	9. everything you know is wrong

**chapter nine**

**everything you know is wrong**

"They tr -….hm … they tried - they tried to -oh, no, wrong…chord …hm…" Marceline said, studying the songbook. "They tried - to make me go - to rehab - reHAB - and I said no, no, no," she half sang, half spoke as she plucked at the guitar. "Yes I've been … black … but when I come … back … you'll - know, know …." She felt eyes on her, and looked up to see Simon standing at the entrance to the living room, staring at her. Or rather, _through_ her, his eyes unfocused and glassy.

"Simon?"

He didn't respond.

"Simon!"

He blinked and his eyes refocused. "…Yeah?"

"You okay dude? You left the planet for a minute there."

"Yeah, I … yeah."

"How are you feeling?"

"Kinda … not quite … here. I guess that means it kicked in." He went to the pantry where he kept his supply of canned food and put his hand on the doorknob.

"Should we go do it then?"

He stood there staring at the closed pantry door, at a sticker that looked as though it was placed there by an employee of the mall before the war. It bore a simple graphic of a grinning face with horns, with the text '_everything you know is wrong_.'

"Simon."

"Everything …" he mumbled.

"Simon! Should we do it now?"

He turned. Blinked. "Do what?"

"Ice up the fridge? For the deer?"

They'd spend the morning in chipper conversation while butchering the deer, a job Simon pronounced much cleaner due to the deer's complete lack of blood. He'd started before her - by the time Marceline woke up and wandered down to the industrial kitchen he'd already re-rigged the breaker to operate the kitchen lights and gutted the animal, the organs laying in a neat pile on another table. He delicately separated the haunches with a cleaver along a neat line of fascia, and sang merrily to himself.

"_Bravely bold Sir Robin rode forth from Camelot._

_He was not afraid to die, oh, brave Sir Robin._

_He was not at all afraid to be killed in nasty ways,_

_Brave brave brave brave Sir Robin!_

"_He was not in the least bit scared to be mashed into a pulp_

_Or to have his eyes gouged out and his elbows broken,_

_To have his kneecaps split and his body burned away_

_And his limbs all hacked and mangled, brave Sir Robin!_

_His head smashed in and his heart cut out _

_And his liver removed and his bowels unplugged_

_And his nostrils raped and his bottom burnt off_

_And his - _"

"What in the actual fuck is that song?" Marceline asked incredulously.

"Oh! Morning Marcy! That's just Monty Python."

"Are they like death metal minstrels or something? Because if so, awesome."

He laughed. "They're a group of comedians, actually. Insane British geniuses." He sighed. "I wish there was a way for you to watch 'The Holy Grail' with me. You have to see it, it's very important."

"It's important, huh?"

He nodded. "It's essential to my mental health that I quote it constantly, like a drama major."

"Uh, okay. Weirdo. How's our friend here coming along?"

"Really well! This no blood thing makes it almost _fun_. I didn't realize you actually got _all _the blood. Seriously, you drained every last corner of this animal, it's pretty great."

"Oh. Yeah, with blood it's kinda automatic. My fangs are actually hollow, and the blood gets sucked up through them like a vacuum, and it - I think - goes just directly into my veins, or something. And that's why its … why, uh … that happened yesterday."

Simon flushed. "Well, you're welcome to drain animals whenever you want, it's made butchering a lot easier."

This time Marceline flushed. "Heh. Noted."

A moment passed wherein which Marceline could see Simon realize what he'd just said could be taken the wrong way, and seemingly debate with himself on whether or not to clarify. Unable to bear the awkwardness Marceline picked up a cleaver and said "Where should I start?"

"Oh, um, anywhere really. I usually like to go from the legs up, it's easier without hooves flying around on you."

"Hm. Okay," she said, and chopped her cleaver down into the deer's knee joint.

"Whoa whoa whoa, don't just hack into it! Here, watch me," he said, and showed her how to divide the meat along natural lines of fascia and tendons. They worked this way in companionable silence for a while. Marceline marveled at this hands-on experience of seeing and feeling how an animal was actually constructed. She found herself thinking of Bubblegum. When she worked with biomass, was this what she did? Did she make her candy people bit by bit, muscle by muscle?

_I should know but I never asked her_, she thought, and sighed.

"You all right?" Simon asked.

"Yeah. Yeah I'm fine. So what's next?"

"Well … the fridge."

"So you're gonna take the pills?"

"Already did."

"Oh," she said, startled. "How long ago?"

"Forty five minutes or so. Not sure how long it takes to kick in."

"I guess we'll see," she said. "You scared?"

He looked surprised she'd asked. "I … well I'm a little apprehensive, sure. I'm not sure how this is gonna go."

She smiled. "Don't be scared, I'm here. I'll make sure nothing happens."

He smiled but it didn't touch his eyes. "Thanks Marcy. Come on, let's wrap this sucker up in plastic and put it in the fridge."

They spent the next couple hours puttering around the house, Marceline fingering out tunes from the songbooks on her guitar. She barely noticed when Simon, who'd suddenly decided to re-arrange his closet, fell quiet, the rustling of boxes and clothes suddenly stopping. About fifteen minutes after that he wandered into the living room in a daze.

_What was he doing in there for fifteen minutes? _She wondered. _Staring at the wall?_

"Okay, well … let's go then," she said.

He didn't reply or move. Just kept staring at the sticker. e_verything you know is wrong_.

"Simon?" she asked, putting her hand on his arm. "Hey."

He turned his head in profile to her, looking at the floor. "There's a weight on me. On my … on my brain," he said, his voice empty. "I've been … flattened. It … flattened me."

"Well, yeah. That might be a good thing when you have the crown on. It might help you control it. Remember?"

He turned back to the sticker and placed his finger upon it, slowly and deliberately. "Everything," he whispered. "Everything I know …."

"Okay, you're starting to freak me out."

He blinked rapidly. Shook his head. Shook it again. "I - sorry. Marcy." He cleared his throat. "Okay. Let's do it. It'll … it'll be okay, come on," he said, then took her hand and led her down the hall, with a brief stop to retrieve the crown from his bedside table. "This is gonna be good. This … this is gonna be worth it."

She began to feel deeply uneasy, but made herself quell it, for his sake.

When they got to the kitchen he pushed the refrigerator door wide open and stood before it, the crown in his hands. He turned to look at her and her heart leapt into her throat. It was a look she hadn't seen in a thousand years but one she recognized instantly. This was Simon hearing something galumphing through the nighttime forest towards their campfire. This was Simon stuffing her into a car before turning to fend off slime zombies.

_Oh my glob, he's terrified_, she thought. She battled the impulse to tell him to call it off. _No. No, if this works it could change everything_.

He turned towards the refrigerator, his back to her. "Here goes nothing," he said, and placed the crown on his head.

The change happened quickly. His hair grew, his skin turned a paler shade of blue, his back hunched, and his hands grew gnarly and old, clawlike. He stood silently before the open refrigerator for a long moment, then flexed his new hands. He gave a deep, low sort of chuckle that set Marceline on edge. She remembered him cackling madly when when he put the crown on, but never this. Never a laugh this controlled. This subtle.

She swallowed. "Simon…?"

He turned and grinned sharp, toothy, rictus grin. A grin that looked unnatural, forced onto his face. Marceline gasped.

"Well hello, _Princess_," he hissed, and grinned wider.

**000**

He moved quicker than was right. He was near her instantly, as though he'd stretched his leg, Jake-like, to get to her in one step. Before she knew what hit her he'd taken her by the waist and pulled her against his side. She gasped at the sudden contact and instinctively pushed back against him.

"Don't act so coy," he whispered sharply.

She swallowed. "Look. Look dude. I - I need you to do something for me."

He looked into her face for a long moment for responding. "_Anything_ for the Princess," he said, almost sarcastically.

"O - okay," she said. "I need you to fill that refrigerator with ice. Can - can you do that?"

"I can," he said softly. He drew his clawed finger along her cheek. She shuddered. "And what do I get in return?"

"My … gratitude?"

He smiled a lazy cat smile. "Isn't that sweet. Your _gratitude." _He leaned in close to whisper in her ear, his breath cold. "You ought to stop pretending, Princess. I've watched you. _We both know_. This refrigerator right here?" he asked, suddenly releasing her, taking a long-step to the fridge.

"Y -yes," she said, shaken, her heart pounding.

"This one?"

"Yeah."

"This one this one this one?" he said, spinning on his heel, sounding suddenly cheery.

"…that one that one that one."

"Your majesty," he said, bowing, and proceeded to blast ice from his hands, carefully filling the space. His control of the ice was more precise than she'd ever seen it. Even Ice King's ice was chaotic, scattered. Not like this. This had the precision of a scalpel. When he finished he turned on his heel and cocked his head at her, grinning.

"Does this befit the Lady's expectations?" he asked, gesturing to the refrigerator.

"Yeah. That's great. Thanks."

"Grand. Down to _business_, then," he said, and did another long step, quick as light, wrapping his arms around her and pressing her to his chest, locking her arms at her side.

"Hey! Let go of me!" she said.

"Hey! Let go of me!" he imitated.

"Look, I don't want to hurt you dude," she said warningly. She struggled against him but he held her in place like a steel vise, with far more strength than he possibly had in his physical body. _Magic_, she thought, a deep dread rising in her.

He raised his eyebrows. "What is it you plan to do, exactly, hm? Become a monster? Breathe fire? Ah, but you don't want to do that. You'll only be hurting _him, _Princess_."_

_Him._

Her blood ran cold_._

"Mm_. Yes_," he breathed. "Ah, you sweet, luscious little thing."

He softly drew his lips along her neck. Despite herself something in her responded, throbbing deeply within her. He gave a low, deep chuckle that reverberated through her body. "Still pretending you don't want this? Come now, Princess. This is _exactly_ what you want. I see the looks you give. You're fooling no one. _Give in to me,_" he said, softly biting her neck. "You won't regret it."

His hand crept up her back, beneath her shirt.

She tried to wriggle out of his grasp. "Simon, stop it!" she commanded.

"Simon, you say?" he whispered. "Ding-dong. Simon's not at home. It's just you and me, Princess." He glanced upwards, then gave her that predator's grin. On his head the red jewels in the crown glinted menacingly.

_Mother of glob_, Marceline realized. _It's the crown. I'm talking to the crown_.

Her reaction was immediate, instinctual. She lifted her feet, dropping all her weight into his arms. When he pitched forward she regained her footing, and with all the power she could muster shoved her knee up into his balls. He doubled over and cried out in pain, which sent the crown tumbling from his head. Marceline tried to back away but he still had his arms around her, only now they were around her knees. He snarled and jerked the back of her knees forward. She collapsed to the floor and he was upon her, straddling her. Desperately she tried to expand her body into a mess of tentacles and fire, but to her horror she felt herself come up against a block, some force keeping her in this shape.

I don't think so," he growled. "I won't let you harm my host with that silliness -now be a good little Princess and - hold - still!"

She hissed, fangs extending. He twisted his hand into the hair near her scalp and forced her face away.

"And this could have been so _nice_," he growled.

She spat in his face.

A flicker of rage passed through his eyes. He backhanded her across the face, then yanked on her hair hard enough to make her cry out, unintentionally freeing her arms from his grasp. She reached up and forced them around his neck, driving her fingers deep into his jugular vein, trying with all her might to shut it closed, to immobilize him long enough for Simon to begin to return, or to weaken the Crown's forcefield enough to allow her to shift her shape.

After a moment he seemed to fully realize that she wasn't going to let go. He released her hair and grabbed at her her wrists, trying to dislodge her grip. She could feel that force -the same one keeping her in one shape - trying to pull her arms apart. _My arms are steel_, _my arms are steel, my arms are steel_, she repeated in her mind, a mantra. His face began to grow purplish, his eyes widening in surprise. She squeezed harder, his sudden weakness filling her with bloodlust. In that moment this was not Simon, it was a _thing_ she had to _kill_. It was only with iron will that she drew herself back from that precipice, from ripping his throbbing jugular vein right out of his neck.

His hands grew limp, falling from her wrists, limply trying to smack her face. His tongue popped out, swelled and purple, a long drip of saliva hanging from it. Her arms shaking with effort she briefly tested the force holding her shape and found it malleable. She burst into a roaring, tentacled beast, wrapping a limb around his now limp body. She threw him into the refrigerator and slammed it shut. She reached another limb into an open panel in the ceiling and ripped loose a piece of steel rebar, which she shoved through the handles of the refrigerator door and tied in place.

He screamed.

It was a scream full of unintelligible, frothing animal rage. Suddenly something slammed against the inside of the refrigerator door, making a convex bulge in the steel, something far too big and too solid to be a man. It sounded like a battering ram. She stationed herself in front of the door, tentacles extended on all sides, readying herself to eject a column of fire should he manage to break through. She felt the pressure of that forcefield attempting to shove her back into her normal form but it was far weaker this time, easier to resist. After a moment the slamming stopped, and something heavy dropped to the floor. From inside the refrigerator came gasps, then violent retching and deep, heaving breaths. An all-too-human moan.

She formed a human mouth on a tentacle. "Simon?"

"Shut up, you … you bitch-demon _cunt,_" came a the growled reply.

"That's what they call me," she replied curtly.

He retched again, and this time something splashed onto the floor. He moaned, and went silent for a few long minutes, the only sound his struggling breaths.

"…Simon?" she asked again after a long moment.

Another moan, sickly and miserable.

She melted down into her normal form and sighed, listening to the seemingly painful process of Simon regaining control over his body. After a moment she leaned her forehead against the door.

"_So_," she sang softly "_so you think you can tell_

"_Heaven from Hell,_

"_Blue skies from pain,_

"_Can you tell a green field_

"_From a cold steel rail?_

"_A smile from a veil?_

"_Do you think you can tell?_

"_Did they get you to trade_

"_Your heroes for ghosts?_

"_Hot ashes for trees?_

"_Hot air for the cool br-"_

He coughed.

"Mar - Marcy?" Simon asked. "What - what happened? Oh god … what did I _do?_"

She tried to answer him, but burst into tears instead.

**000**


	10. the sky, the ground, the air, a crown

**chapter ten**

**the sky, the ground, the air, a crown**

"None of my _business?_ How in - what the hell do you mean, it's none of my business?"

Marceline sat on the bed, arms crossed, shaking her head. Simon stood in the bathroom before the mirror.

"Will you at least tell me what happened to my neck?" he asked. "Because these bruises look like hand marks. And it certainly feels like I've been kicked in the nuts recently. So if whatever I was doing was bad enough that you had to throttle me and lock me in the refrigerator - oh my _god_," he said, face contracting in agony as he again considered the implications of this. "Marcy, please, just … tell me."

When he'd revived, but before she let him out of the refrigerator, she'd dashed to his bathroom and hurriedly flushed the bottle of thorazine down the toilet, then splashed water on her face. She untwisted the steel rebar from the door handles and found Simon on his knees in a daze, holding his head in his hands, vomit down his front, wincing. On the floor next to him was a huge battleaxe made of solid ice, far bigger than a man of his stature could even lift, much less use to almost break down a solid aluminum door.

"What - what the hell -?" he said, gingerly rising to his feet. "_Auck_," he said, putting his hand on his throat. "Mar - Marcy?"

"It's okay," she said.

"What - what _happened_ here?"

"The pills didn't work."

"Well clearly! God -did _I_ make this?" he said, looking at the battleaxe. "What the hell was I - ?" He looked at the door. "Did - was I trapped in here? Marceline, did you … did you have to _lock me in here?"_

"Come on," she said, taking his hand and leading him out of the kitchen. "You're covered in barf."

"I - are you hurt? Did I hurt you? Tell me I didn't hurt you, Marceline."

She ran her tongue over a deep cut on the inside of her mouth, where her fang had ripped into her cheek when he backhanded her. "You didn't hurt me," she said. "I'm fine. It's over."

"No you're not, there's bruises all over your arms. What happened?"

She looked up at him and began to reply, but seeing the pain in his eyes she knew she couldn't do it.

"Mind your own business, Simon," she said softly.

He blinked. "_What?_"

"Go take a shower. I'll make you some tea."

"Now hold on -"

"_Simon!" _she said, pointing. "Go."

"Okay, okay!"

Now here he stood in the doorway, exasperated, pained, glancing from her bruised arms and bleeding lip to his own wounds in the mirror.

"Marcy…."

She shook her head. "Stop."

He went still, looking at her, but she couldn't look at him. She was angry, she realized, as though a part of her couldn't let go of the adrenaline, couldn't quite understand that this Simon was not the Simon who'd just attacked her, still scared that he might suddenly shift back into that wraith and try to force himself on her. _Stop that_, she chided herself.

Simon made an impotent gesture with his hands. Fidgeted. Suddenly, as though he could not longer take it, he knelt before her and rested his head in her lap, his arms encircling her waist. He was warm and smelled of soap. "Please forgive me," he whispered. "It was bad, Marcy, I know it was."

She put her hand on his head. Her lower lip quivered. "You have nothing to be sorry for," she said, stroking his wet hair.

"Of course I do. This was my stupid idea, I - "

"_No_, Simon, you _don't_. Look at me."

He lifted his head and looked up into her face.

"_Never_ apologize for this again. It's - it's not your place."

He straightened. "What do you _mean?_"

She felt a flicker of anger. "I mean, what just went down in there is between me, and _that,_" she said, pointing at the crown.

He turned to glance at the crown. "How -? "

She took him by the chin, made him face her, then quickly pecked him on the lips. It had the desired effect- he stopped talking and merely looked at her, stunned.

"You stay out of it," she said. "Now drink your tea."

**000**

Days passed, and Simon grew preoccupied.

He continued to push the issue, kept trying to get her to reveal what happened. The harder he pushed the more she shut down. After a few days he seemed to let it go, or at least he stopped bringing it up. This bought her a moment's peace, for which she was grateful, but she began to see curiously less of him. He immersed himself in fixing things -fixing everything, it seemed, though he seemed to avoid the kitchen whenever possible. He spent the afternoons tuning up the generator, rewiring the fuse boxes, cleaning his rifles. He would wander up into the mall to scavenge alone. His drum set remained abandoned in the living room, half built. Some days he didn't appear until the evening and she had to go find him.

"Hey," she said, leaning in the doorway. "Haven't see you all day."

His back was to her. He was working on the generator setup again, doing something with the straps connected to the bicycle. Next to him were two or three electrical engineering books, stained with black grease from his hands.

"Hmm?" he asked, pushing his glasses up on his nose, looking at the book.

"Are you okay?"

He glanced over his shoulder and gave her a brief smile. "Yep."

"You sure you're not hungry or anything?"

"I'm okay for now, thanks Marcy."

She stood frowning in the doorway a moment longer as he turned his attention back to his project, then floated, sunken, down the hall. When he wandered into the living room at the end of the day they ate their meals together, chatted normally. In the evenings he continued fixing things or read, and she plucked at her guitar or browsed the immense library he'd collected. They existed in a companionable, if chilled, silence, one she found herself somehow terrified to break.

This terror confused her. Why should it be so hard for her to just walk up to him, to ask why he was avoiding her? Yet every time she tried her mouth went dry, her chest turned sore and cavernous. These were feelings she associated with her father, with Ash, with Bubblegum, not Simon, and knowing that made her even more afraid. It was the feeling of knowing she would not like the answer to whatever question she asked. Of being abandoned down a well. Simon had turned himself into a smiling wall and it made her feel like she was being slowly smothered with a pillow.

One afternoon he wandered absently into the living room. "Do you know where the, uh … the thing is?"

She laughed. "Potentially anywhere?"

"Heh. Sorry. I mean the … uh … " he made a chopping motion with his hand.

"The meat cleaver?"

"Yes. Thank you. I need to cut a length of transmission belt and scissors aren't going to do it."

"Last I saw it was in the kitchen."

A shadow passed over his face. He hadn't been in the kitchen for more than thirty seconds since the incident, not even to retrieve a cut of venison.

"You want me to go get it?" she asked gently.

"No," he said, and then more firmly, "No. I have to clean up in there at some point."

"I'll do it."

Her shot her a look which contained a split second of aggression so forceful she flinched. Just as quickly he looked away.

"No, Marceline," he said. "You don't clean up my messes."

She began to protest but the words didn't come, stomped down by a smothering cushion of anxiety. He seemed to take her silence for agreement, grabbed something from the cabinet where he kept his tools, and marched off down the hall on a mission. A moment later the lights in the living room flickered and dimmed, which, due to Simon's wiring and their limited power, was what happened when the lights were on in the kitchen.

She held her breath. After a moment she heard a skitter, and a loud bang. She leapt from the couch and down the hall to the kitchen, her heart pounding. Simon stood before the open refrigerator door, the handle of which had fallen to the floor and caused the bang. He stared down at the huge frozen battleaxe, his face fixed in a grimace.

"Hey. Hey, no. Don't look at that, it's okay," she said, moving in front of him to push the door closed.

"_Marceline!_" he snapped, forcing it back open.

She jumped and let go of the door. He stood looking at the battleaxe for a lingering moment, then at the slices it cut into the aluminum interior. His jaw twitched and he slowly shook his head, turned, and leaned with his palms flat against the butcher block, head bowed. After a moment of this she floated closer to him. She tried to look at his face but he wouldn't raise his head to meet her gaze. Feeling empty and impotent she looked at the floor.

"Marcy," he said after a long moment. "Do you know when you're going back to Ooo?"

Her breath caught in her chest. "No. I have no idea if I am at all." She swallowed, forced her fear beneath her feet, and said, "Why? Do you want me to go back to Ooo?"

He sighed. "It's not that I want you to, it's that I think it would probably be best."

She crossed her arms. "Well. I … don't."

"You'll leave eventually anyway," he said, so quietly she could barely hear. "I'd rather you did it by choice than by force." He glanced back at the open refrigerator behind him, at the battleaxe. "It's only a matter of time."

"No it isn't."

"Marcy - "

"I'm not _Betty_, Simon."

He looked up at her sharply, startled. "What do you mean?"

"I mean I'm not going to just _leave_ because something went sideways. Okay? I actually _care_ about you."

He gave her a warning look. "That's uncalled for," he said, so evenly and softly it chilled her.

Her anxiety ticked over into anger. "Really? Because I think it's perfectly fucking called for. I'm sorry, I don't know what the fuck that is, but just walking out on someone you're engaged to because they do one weird thing isn't _love_, okay? That's - I don't know what that is. It's bullshit. To just end everything like that? What could you have … possibly …." she began, but her voice faded as her eyes fell on the battleaxe in the refrigerator.

He stared coldly at her. "What could I have possibly done?" he asked, gesturing to it. "The evidence seems pretty clear. But you know better than I do, Marceline. And you won't tell me."

"That's because - "

"It's none of my business?"

"Yes," she said, but it sounded weak.

He shook his head. "It's _entirely_ my business."

"No it isn't! It wasn't _you_, you weren't _there!_"

"Do you have any idea how much that _terrifies_ me? Does that even _matter_ to you?"

"Is that why you've been avoiding me like the plague?"

"Because I might I'll hurt you? Yes. Marceline, I've … I've been craving thorazine. _Craving_ it. I find myself looking for it. I know you got rid of it and I feel like I want to shout at you for it. Like I … I want to _hit_ you. I didn't even like it! I don't know why but I can't stop _thinking_ about it and I'm - " he shook his head. "I think it did something to me. It - _this_ - " he gestured to the kitchen. "Something's wrong. Something's really wrong. I can feel it but I don't know what it is, and I think you do but _you won't tell me what happened."_

"I won't tell you because _you'll never fucking forgive yourself,_ Simon!" she shouted.

A moment of satisfaction crossed his face, quickly followed by anguish.

"Yeah," he said. "That's … that's what I thought."

He was still for a moment, flexing his hands open and closed, then he stalked out of the kitchen and down the hall. She pushed the refrigerator door closed and followed him. He was in the front hall putting his boots and jacket on.

"Where are you going?"

"Out. Hunting," he said, taking the rifle from the wall.

"You can't just - "

"I need to clear my head," he said sharply, in a tone that indicated there would be no argument. She looked at the floor. He sighed heavily, slung the rifle over his back, and left.

"Simon - " she began, but he'd already shut the door.

He'd forgotten the crown.

**000**

It was only about forty five minutes before she decided to go after him. She knew he wanted time to be alone but the thought of him out there in that mutant-filled forest without the crown frightened her too much to remain. She threw on her coat and sunglasses, grabbed her umbrella and headed out, leaving the crown where it sat next to the couch. If Simon needed protection she could provide it, and she didn't want to touch the thing. She could barely look at it.

When she got outside she lifted her nose to sniff the breeze, caught Simon's scent, and followed it. She finally found him up on a pile of boulders that offered a good view of a clearing. The highest boulder was flat on the top, and a nearby willow offered cover. It was the perfect place to hunt, but Simon wasn't hunting. He sat on the edge of the boulder with his rifle across his lap, looking out into the distance. She floated up and over the boulder pile from behind.

"Hey," she said.

He turned. He did not seem surprised, or particularly pleased, to see her. "Hello."

"You forgot - oh!" There was a feathered heap on the boulder next to him. "Wow, you got a bird?"

"Yeah," he said, lifting it's wing to show her. "Huge wild turkey. Never seen one out here before."

"So the obvious thing to do was kill it."

He chuckled. "Roast it up, that's food for a week."

"I miss eating sometimes," she said softly.

"Hm." He turned to look back out over the clearing.

"You. Um. You forgot the crown. Sorry. I was worried."

"I didn't forget it. I didn't want it."

"What if you needed it?"

He shrugged.

After a moment she floated over him, sat directly behind him so her legs were on either of his, and hugged him from behind, pressing her cheek against his right shoulder, holding the umbrella over them both. He gave a great, resigned sigh and accepted her embrace, putting his hand on her knee and pressing his other hand to the one she held against his chest. She closed her eyes for a moment and just existed with him, smelled him, felt the slow rise and fall of his breathing and listened to his heart beat. He leaned back slightly, relaxing into her, and she found herself suddenly drowsy and burning, wishing there were less layers between them.

_Oh glob_, she suddenly thought. _I want him_.

She couldn't tell whether the realization was a shock or something she'd known all along, or both, but the simple act of putting words to it hit her like a bat to head. Every mixed up feeling she had for him, feelings she picked at as separate entities, suddenly congealed into one thing so quickly she nearly stopped breathing. Her eyes went wide.

_I want him_.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm sorry Marcy, I'm just afraid. I lost you once, I can't stand to lose you again."

She swallowed, still shaken from her revelation, but forced herself to focus. "No, I'm sorry. And you're … you're right."

He glanced back over his shoulder at her, bemused. "I am?"

"Yeah. You are." She sighed. "It's just hard for me to tell you stuff I know will make you hate yourself."

He went silent for a moment. "Well. Maybe I need to stop with that, then. The, uh. The self-pity, I mean. I mean … who is it helping? Not me, not you."

"Nobody really."

They were silent for a while. She shut her eyes, tempted to let herself just dissolve into this new feeling, into the satisfying mass and warmth of his presence.

"Maybe I've been thinking about this all wrong," he said

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, it's been … all this time … this thing I'm either struggling with or letting win, every minute of every day, but there's no structure to it, or to my … my understanding of it. It's hard to explain. It's like … since I first put the crown on it's become like air. Like a fish trying to fight water. It's just … I'm in it. I have no … there's nowhere I can look where it isn't, except the past, and I forget more and more of that every year. I'm just … in … this thing - that's - that I can't name." He shook his head. "I'm sorry, that probably doesn't make much sense."

"No," she said, thinking of her recent discovery. "I think I get you."

"You do? Oh good, that sounded pretty garbled on the way out," he said, chuckling, the low deep vibration of which made her eyelids flutter. "That's why I want to know what happened in the kitchen. I want to know what you saw. I know it'll be painful to hear but I need to start building a box to put this thing in. If it doesn't have a name - if it's just nebulous - I'll never be able to really fight it. Not really. But you're outside of it. You can see things I can't, and I need all that information, anything I can get. Even if it's awful. Do you … do you get that?"

She nodded. "Yeah. But you have to promise - _promise_ me - that you won't torture yourself over this. Okay? You listen, do whatever you need to do with it, and you move on."

He took her hand. "_We_ move on. I'm gonna need your help for this to work."

She closed her eyes and nuzzled into him. Gave him a brief peck on the shoulder. "You got it."

He leaned back to press his cheek to the top of her head. "Thank you," he whispered.

They stayed like that for a long moment. The wind rustled the trees, but otherwise there was an utter silence made nearly unbearable by Marceline's sense that her heart could fill it, that what she suddenly knew she felt was bigger than the sky, the ground, the air, a crown. It was as though every cell in her body turned at once to face Simon, and the puzzle piece of her existence suddenly, finally, fit into the universal board.

"There's no going back from this," she whispered.

"I know," he whispered back.

"Are you ready?"

He swallowed, and nodded. "Yeah. Hit me with it."

She took a deep breath, and began.

**000**


	11. to love a thing

**chapter eleven**

**to love a thing**

"Say you're sorry one more time and I'll smack you, I swear to glob."

Simon put his hands up. "I know, I know, I'm just -"

"-I'll do it, dude. Don't test me," she said, but she smiled.

"Sorr - no, _not_ sorry. Totally unapologetic. Better?"

"Heh. Sure."

They'd talked softly on the boulder pile for an hour, until the sun went down and the winter cold edged toward unbearable. They went back to the mall together, hand in hand, a type of contact that never shook her before the way it shook her now. In that revelatory moment on the rock everything about him shifted. He changed from Simon to a _man, _lanky and slender, bespectacled and thoughtful, with a kind heart and skilled hands, who could hunt and fix things and care for a young child in the middle of a wasteland. She suddenly wanted him so intensely that she had to float back to the mall, her knees too weak to walk. When they arrived back at home she sat on the couch and found herself unable to focus on what he said for the pure intoxication of watching him talk, his sad eyes, the way his hair framed his face, the way he moved his angular hands.

Oh, his _hands_. They were a whole universe. She wanted them _everywhere_.

Mouth dry, she excused herself to the bathroom and merely floated in slow circles, her face in her hands, at a loss. She wanted to scream and laugh and cry, all while unbearably aroused, her face flushed. She looked at herself in the mirror, her cheeks bright red. _Oh glob_, _look at me_, she thought, splashing cold water on her face. _Does he know?_

A flash in her mind's eye, a mean glint. A cruelly grinning mouth. _You're fooling no one_.

She gasped and jerked, hitting the top of her head on the faucet. She yelped.

"You okay?" Simon called.

"Yeah - I just … tripped," she called back.

"Don't fall in!"

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, trying to push the grinning specter from her mind. _Ignore him, don't think about that asshole, he was trying to fuck with you_. Her mouth warped into a crooked smile. _Like, literally_.

But his lips had been on her neck, and something deep within her liked it.

_Because they were Simon's_.

Simon, kissing her neck. Simon running his hand up beneath her shirt. She could barely breathe.

_Oh glob,_ she thought. _This might actually kill me. I might actually literally die of this. _She allowed herself one long moment to wallow before forcing herself under control. _Okay, calm down. He needs you to not be totally fucking useless right now_.

Earlier, outside, when she finished the story of what happened in the kitchen he went silent for a long while.

"You okay?" she asked into his back.

"Yeah, I'm just … yeah. Thinking."

"Okay," she said, happy to let him think, to stay there holding him.

Eventually, he said, "I'm sorry," which was the first of too many apologies.

"All right, you said that," she finally chided him. "What else?"

"It's … it's actually not as bad as I was afraid of."

"Yikes. What did you _think_ happened?"

"I … " he hesitated. "You don't want to know, please … don't make me say it." He straightened, patting her thigh. "Sun's going down, sweetheart. Let's go back."

She composed herself, ran her hands through her hair a few times, and floated back to the living room. Simon sat crossed legged on the couch, his back against the armrest, holding the crown with the tips of his fingers, studying it. When she sat down he glanced up at her, then back down to the crown.

_His _artifact, she thought. _That's how this started, for him_.

"So, it's … a person?" he asked.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean it has a whole personality. That's what came through while I was away? Like a conscious, coherent person? That wasn't me?"

"Seemed that way. You didn't know that?"

He shook his head. "It doesn't feel that way to me. There's no - I don't know - voice? It doesn't talk, it feels. It wants. But never in any sort of pattern that adds up to a whole _person_. I .. I wouldn't have guessed that. Especially not someone so violent and …" he glanced up at her, face blushing slightly, "…violent. But that - well, _that _part makes sense, at least. Explains some things."

"Like what?"

He shook his head, flushing. "It's not important. But I suppose I could try to write down every time I feel something that might not be me, or that I see something that's not real. Maybe a pattern would form that would show what's the crown, and what's me."

She thought for a moment. "Didn't you say that the only place you can look where the crown isn't is the past?"

He nodded.

"Do you have any pictures? Momentos? Stuff like that?"

"Yeah, there's some photo albums in the closet."

She nodded. "Okay. Got frames?"

In the end he didn't have enough frames to do the job, but Simon had a solution. After about half an hour of digging in the storage closet he produced a few packages of a sort of blue clay called Sticky Tack. "There's a Hobby Lobby up there," he said. "If you like to paint or knit or anything like that, you're in business."

"I keep meaning to learn to knit," she said, carefully affixing the blue clay to all four corners of an old photograph. It was Simon sitting with a group of somewhat square-looking people at a pub. "Who are these?" she asked as she pressed the photo to the wall.

His brow furrowed. "That's … hmm." He studied the picture for a moment more, then suddenly pointed to a blonde man sitting next to him. "That's … that's definitely Todd. If that's Todd then this is probably when I was a TA in the History department, when I was getting my Masters. So this is … well this is probably the History Department. I think? Yeah. Yeah, we'd go out every Thursday for a round or two. Shoot the shit. Oh, and that's … that's _Veronica!" _he said, pointing to a woman who had her hand on his shoulder. "Heh. Veronica. Breadballs. She had a huge crush on me. I used to hate it when she touched me like that."

"You weren't into it?"

"_No_."

Marceline laughed. "Why not, she's not bad looking."

"She was creepy."

"How?"

"Just obsessive. Texting me all the time, leaving little notes on my desk, baking me things I was scared to eat."

"Aww! Well look at you!" she said, pointing to Simon in the picture, a young olive-skinned man in a houndstooth vest, with glasses and lanky brown hair. "Look at what a cutie you were! Poor girl couldn't help herself."

He laughed. Ran a hand through his hair. "And now she'd probably run the other way."

She smiled slyly at him. "Not if she was smart."

He smiled back. "I doubt even Veronica is into blue guys with huge noses."

"Some girls are _expressly_ into blue guys with huge noses."

"Oh? And where are they?"

"Right here, buddy," she said, before she could stop herself.

Simon burst out laughing and Marceline quickly followed suit, her heart pounding.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, sweetheart," he said, giving her a quick squeeze that made her heart beat even faster. "Hell, I might literally be the last man on earth, if that doesn't raise my market value I don't know what will."

"Yeah," she said, her face bright red. She quickly took another picture out of the album, an old woman with a little naked baby in her lap. "Who's this?" she asked.

He squinted at it. "No idea. Give it a minute though."

They spent the remainder of the evening in this fashion, sticking photo after photo up on the walls. If he could remember, she had him tell her who was in the photo and where it was taken, the story behind it. Some, especially the pictures of Betty, sent him into long, sad reveries. She didn't like the pictures of Betty, longed to put then somewhere she wouldn't have to look at them, but she swallowed her emotions for his sake. She was from the part of him, growing ever-rarer, where the crown had no power, and Marceline could bear her presence for that.

_I have no right to feel like that about her anyway,_ she said, feeling suddenly guilty.

"-with his girlfriend down to this huge festival down in Indio, and she knew one of the guys from - god, I think it was Blockhead? So we even got backstage!" Simon said, holding a picture he'd taken from the backseat of a car. It was of his friend Todd, looking back from the driver's seat and grinning, a cigarette in his mouth. "Lot of fun, lot of fun. Ah. I miss Todd, really do, he was a great guy before he got into Ayn Rand."

"Hey, um," Marceline said. "So I think I need to apologize to you about something."

"You do?"

"Yeah. I'm, uh … I'm sorry for what I said about Betty earlier. That wasn't cool."

"Oh…" he said. "Don't be. It's okay."

"It's not okay, I never knew her. It was out of line."

"You were upset, people say things when they're upset. I understand that point you were trying to make, though. And I appreciate it."

"You do?"

"Yeah. And I mean, look at this," he said gesturing to the walls covered in photos. "This is a great idea, putting all these up, to remind me of … of me. And you're doing it because you care about me, and, well …" he smiled, and softly stroked her hair. "You're wonderful, Marcy. I love you." He leaned in and pecked her on the cheek. "I'd better get that bird carved up," he said, and trotted down the hall to the kitchen.

"Hey!" she called after him.

He glanced back over his shoulder.

"I love you too," she said.

He smiled and turned the corner.

**000**

"Okay, what the hell. I do not get this at all," Marceline said, holding two needles with red yarn between them, looking at the "Knitting For Beginners" book she'd lifted from the abandoned Hobby Lobby. The photo wall now covered the living room wall opposite the couch and was creeping into the hallway. The previous night they went to sleep after running out of Sticky Tack, both exhausted. Simon passed out right on the couch but she lay tossing and turning, his smell having turned his bed into a torture chamber of longing.

His hand in her hair. _You're wonderful, Marcy. I love you_. And that chaste as hell kiss.

_Well what do you expect?_ She thought to herself. _He's just gonna randomly jump you?_ _Start making out with you out of nowhere? You're kind of like a daughter to him._

Her eyes widened. She looked up at his pockmarked bedroom ceiling.

_Oh glob. What if he only ever sees me that way?_

_Oh glob… and what if he actually does see me differently?_

She sat up in bed, pulling her knees to her chest. Suddenly either outcome seemed equally fraught. If Simon didn't want her, her existence would turn into a hellish limbo of sexual frustration. But if he did … then what? How would that even work? Was it even _right _to feel this way about him_?_

Until now her feelings for Simon were intense and loving, but not _this_ kind of love. Over the past thousand years he'd occupied a place into her heart akin to a beloved uncle, a loving guardian, a perpetually puzzled angel who'd flown in and out of her life as long as she'd been alive. He'd long been old and crazy, had long forgotten who she even was by the time she started her few hundred years of puberty. She'd never seen this Simon with these eyes.

_That's also true for him, though. You've seen how he looks at you._

That much was true, at least. No matter how Simon wished to appear to her he could not fool her animal senses. She felt his eyes on her, could detect where the blood in his body moved, especially since drinking the buck in the forest. She'd smelled the arousal coming off him in waves that day, clear as glass, and she'd detected it since. Despite any fatherly feelings he harbored there was no way he wasn't physically attracted to her. He hadn't so much as laid eyes on a woman in what? Five years? Seven?

_He must be dying,_ she thought. _He must be like a starving man with a freshly baked pie wandering around his house he can't eat. Oh Simon, its okay, you can eat me!_

She covered her mouth with her hand, muffling her laughter at her own accidental joke. She snorted. _Glob. Why am I such a dope, _she thought_. Just because he's attracted to me doesn't mean he'll ever act on it. He's probably just as confused about it as I am. _She flushed, the thought of him confused over his new feelings for her entirely enchanting. She brought her palm to her forehead and sighed. _Ugh,_ she thought. _I just can't win_.

She sighed and finally lay down. She slept fitfully, if at all, and woke up early. Trying to avoid gazing at Simon sleeping on the couch, she went up through the mall to find the hobby store he'd mentioned. She returned with the sticky tack, a beginner's knitting kit, and silver silk poinsettias covered in holographic glitter she found herself unable to part with. When she returned home she set them into a plastic pitcher, plopped them down on the coffee table before a still-drowsy Simon, and announced. "Motherfucking disco blossoms."

He gave a loud, surprised laugh. Heart pounding, she put her hands on either side of his face and kissed the part of his hair. He gently touched her leg with the tips of his fingers. She lingered a second longer than she had to, focusing intensely on the circulation of blood in his body. When she detected to where, exactly, it rushed, she stroked his hair and smiled.

"Morning," she said. "I'll make you coffee."

**000**

"Oh! I thought I'd lost this!" Simon said.

He dug through some boxes he'd pulled out of the storage closet while Marceline continued sticking photographs to the hallway wall. He held up a pale green sheet of paper for her to see.

"What is it?"

"My birth certificate. Glad I found it, that's not something you want to lose. Well. Not that it matters anymore, I doubt identity theft or passport issues are going to be a huge problem going forward. But yeah. Here it is," he said, handing it to Marceline.

"Simon Andres Petrikov, born Dec 28 1979 at 10:20 pm. Santa Clara, California. Weight: 7.6 pounds, length 13.2 inches. Mother: Amora-Rose Medina. Father: Vlasij Petrikov." She recalled a photo of Simon's parents, still in the hospital holding him as a newborn. His mother flushed but beaming, her brown hair in a messy bun, and his father, pale with a dark mustache, leaning into the photo. Simon, a small cloth bundle against his mother's chest. She'd seen other pictures - 8 month old Simon in a high chair with spaghetti sauce all over his little face, Amora-Rose laughing up at the camera. An unsmiling, serious Simon in his third grade school picture, oddly dignified for such a small child.

"Why didn't you smile?" she asked when she saw it.

"I don't know," he said, laughing. "I think I was trying to look presidential."

"Presidential?"

"I went through a phase where I wanted to be President, according to my mother."

"That's fucking adorable. You were a cute kid."

He nudged her. "So were you."

"Go Team Cute!" she said.

"Go Team Cute!" he repeated, high-fiving her.

She handed the certificate back to Simon.

"I should probably find somewhere safe to put this," he said.

"No, we should put it up," she said, taking the certificate back. "Here, I know just the place. C'mon."

"The bathroom?" Simon asked when they arrived.

"Yup," she said, affixing Sticky Tack to the certificate and pressing it to the mirror. "There," she said. "That's you. Every day, first thing, you look at yourself in the mirror and you see your name and your parent's names, and - wait - " she trotted out of the room to retrieve the photo of Simon as a stalwart-faced third grader, which she stuck on the mirror below the certificate. "-here. You. President Petrikov. Don't you forget it."

He smiled crookedly and the certificate and the photo, then their reflection in the mirror. He put his arms over Marceline's shoulders then drew her into a hug, resting his chin on the top of her head. She wrapped her arms around him and closed her eyes. She could hear his heart, feel his blood circulating, could feel the need buried under the kind intent of this embrace.

_It would be so easy_, she thought. _He's right here. He's hungry. It wouldn't take much._

He kissed the top of her head. "Come on," he said, releasing her. "I found a whole other album. You can listen to me yammer on about my past some more."

She smiled and followed him.

_No_, she thought. _No, I can't do that to him. If this is gonna happen, it'll happen. I pushed things with Ash and look how that turned out._

She thought of Ash, her extreme infatuation, her attempts to gain his attention. The painful memory of their relationship, the heartbreak and betrayal. How intense it all was as she lived it. At the time she couldn't fathom feelings deeper than the ones Ash inspired. She'd felt as though he'd scraped down the bottom of her soul, as though she'd found the other half she could not live without. She'd thought her love for Ash was, without a doubt, love as it was and should be, the storybook kind of dreamy, sweeping love every girl is promised. Nevermind that deep down it didn't make her happy. It followed the script. What else was there to loving, to wanting, than that infernal globdamn script?

Simon, sitting on the floor, looked into the box and laughed. "Oh no. Oh gosh. Mom _would_ have kept this," he said. He lifted a sheet of green construction paper decorated a childishly scrawled stick figure family, to which was glued dry noodles. "Macaroni art," he said, chuckling. He handed it to her, and she started in with the Sticky Tack.

"Oh, you don't have to put that up, Marcy."

"Yeah I do," she said.

He flushed slightly. "If you think it's important."

"It's all important, Simon." She stood, then leaned down to kiss the top of his head. She wanted to let her limbs grow loose, to drape herself over him like a blanket, to draw her hands up through his hair and press her mouth to his, but instead she found a suitable place on the wall, right next to Amora-Rose and Vlasij Petrikov's wedding picture, and hung the macaroni art there. She turned to Simon and smiled. He smiled back, a smile full of warmth and gratitude and love.

_If he never wanted me to so much as touch him, I wouldn't_, she suddenly realized. _I want him, but I love him more_.

She swallowed, looking down the hall of the gallery of Simon's life she'd created, pictures lovingly assembled, each with a story she sought to commit to memory - so she could serve as Simon's, should it ever come to that. Her eyes fell on a needlepoint of Amora-Rose's, a quote surrounded by roses. "To Love A Thing Means Wanting It To Live."

She glanced down at Simon, happily sorting through the box of his memories.

_Ash_, she thought, _you scraped the bottom of nothing._

**000**


	12. a law of the universe

_(Author's Note: As you may have noticed this story is rated Mature. One of the reasons for that rating is in this chapter. Please conduct yourself accordingly. Thank you.)_

**chapter twelve**

**A law of the universe**

"I think I got it!" Marceline said, showing Simon a tangle of red yarn suspended between two knitting needles.

He pushed his glasses up on his nose. "Have you?"

"…yes? Wait." She attempted another stitch, at which point the entire mess came undone. "How the - ? What the hell! I don't even - " she leaned over the book, reading silently, her lips moving. "But I _did_ all that! Seriously, I - you know what? Fuck knitting. Knitting is stupid." She threw the needles and yarn down to the floor with a clatter.

"That's the spirit," Simon said, licking his index finger to turn the page of his book, a dense history of Norway. They sat on the couch with their backs against opposite armrests. The couch was so large that even facing one another their legs only occasionally touched.

"Knitting is for people who can't play music," she said, retrieving her guitar from where it rested against the wall. "If I'm gonna do something with my hands I'd rather do something with my hands that I don't totally suck at."

"It's certainly more pleasant to listen to," he said wryly, glancing at her over the top of his book. She stuck her tongue out at him and he chuckled. She opened the book of Amy Winehouse songs and started tuning her guitar.

"You're playing a lot of her lately," Simon remarked.

"I really like her! I just wish I could actually listen to her music. It's hard to know if you're getting a song right if you haven't heard it."

"Hm," Simon said. "Yeah, it's a pity. The generator only puts out enough power to keep the lights on and work the hot plate a couple times a day. I used to get so lonely for music that I'd just sing to myself all the time. Well. Before you, that is." He smiled and patted her foot. "Now I have a little jukebox who sucks blood and can't knit."

She laughed. "Is the no-knitting thing going to be a problem?"

"It's totally unacceptable. Get out."

"Unacceptable, huh? You sound like Lemongrab."

"Lemon what?"

"Well no, in order you sound like Lemongrab you have to put your hands up like this," she said, holding her fists by her chin, "and be all _UNACCEPTABBBLLLLLLE!_" she yelled shrilly.

He winced. "Who is Lemon Guy and why are you making that sound?"

"Lemon_grab_, and he's Peeb's uncle."

"Peebs?"

"Princess Bubblegum. Ruler of the Candy Kingdom. I told you about her."

"Right, I … right. And Lemongrab is her uncle?"

"Yeah. He's pretty much always miserable and screams constantly. I think she messed something up really badly when she made him, but Peebs never admits it when she makes a mistake. _Ever._"

"Wait, did you say she _made_ him?"

"Yeah."

"She made … her uncle?"

"Well, yeah. She made everyone in the Candy Kingdom."

Simon's eyes glazed over. He blinked and shook his head. "I swear, every time you tell me about Ooo it's like you're describing a bad acid trip."

"A _what_ trip?"

He paused. "LSD?"

"What's that?"

He chuckled. "Yeah, not surprised you don't know of it, it doesn't sound like you need it where you come from."

She paused. "Wow. I never thought about it like that. I mean to you Ooo must seem totally weird. I remember a little bit about life before the war and it wasn't like Ooo at all. I don't know. Ooo makes sense to me because I watched Ooo happen. But to someone who hadn't I guess it would seem bizarre."

He shrugged. "I should get used to it. Things have been getting more and more bizarre since I found the crown, it figures it would be an exponential process. Strangeness just doubling and tripling on itself the further forward we move in time, until one day we have people made of gum who make their own screaming lemon-uncles."

"Well when you put it like _that_…."

He smiled.

She crossed her arms. "I don't know. I'm not sure someone who gets as excited as you did about eggs this morning could really adjust to the full Ooo experience."

"I wasn't excited about eggs. I was absolutely ecstatic about eggs, and I still am."

That morning after Simon did his hour on the bicycle generator the two of them dressed warmly and set out to forage. To her surprise they didn't head to the forest, but instead around the other side of the mall and down an alley, then through to a stretch of abandoned suburban houses. There was something bittersweet about them, sad and deflated against the gray, overcast sky. At one time they'd been painted in happy pastels, had lawns that were tended to, but now the grass was dead and the colorful walls were faded and cracked. Children's toys littered front yards, little seesaws and sandboxes with happy plastic faces, basketball hoops fallen to the ground like felled trees. Dolls rendered faceless by years of sun and wind.

Simon led her between two houses, then to a wooden slat fence with a few slats missing. "After you," he said, gesturing to the gap, and she floated through. She found herself in a huge shared backyard onto which several houses opened. There was an empty swimming pool with a thick puddle of mud at the bottom, a concrete patio with decrepit outdoor furniture, and next to that a tree from which something boxy and fuzzy hung. The front half of a hollow cardboard animal, she realized. Near it was a picnic table on which still-wrapped presents sat, and a metallic banner that read, in barely legible sunburnt letters, "Happy 5th Birthday Juana."

"Yeah, I try not to look at that too much," Simon said quietly.

"Pretty sad," Marceline whispered.

"I kind of hate it here, to be honest. The pinata still had candy in it when I first found this place. Took me a long time to get desperate enough to break it open. Felt wrong. Still does."

"I'm sure Juana would understand."

He smiled but it didn't touch his eyes. "Ate the candy from a five year old's birthday pinata. She'd be a teenager now. I just…" He sighed. "I don't like looking at it. Come on," he said. "The stuff we want is over here." He led her past the tree to the rest of the yard, which looked like a pile of overground weeds about fifty feet on a side.

"This used to be a vegetable garden," he said. "Still is, but everything got all mixed up and started growing on top of itself but there's still a lot in there. Just gotta dig for it."

"It's the middle of winter."

"Oh, there's tons of stuff in winter. Beets, cabbages, lettuces, stuff like that." He reached into his pack to retrieve two pairs of gardening shears, and handed one to Marceline. "Be careful, though. Sometimes there's nasty mutant bugs in there. Got bit once and my arm turned yellow and swelled up for a week."

She knelt down and began carefully cutting vines. "If I see a bug I'll kick it's face off," she said.

He chuckled. "Thank you kindly."

They worked this way in companionable silence for a while. She found some beets and carrots, which she tossed into a basket Simon brought along, and he found cabbages. "Can you eat this?" he asked, handing her a healthy sized purple cabbage head.

She brushed the dirt off it, gave it a quick sniff, and held it to her mouth. It faded from purple to blue.

"Wowzers!" Simon exclaimed, smiling.

"Mm!" she said. "Really nice actually." She handed the dark blue cabbage back to him.

"Do … do I want this?" he asked.

She shrugged. "Don't see why not."

"It's not like you just handed me chewed gum?"

"No. I didn't chew it, I just drained the red out of it. It's still edible."

He looked skeptical.

She laughed. "You're all weirded out."

"Yeah, I…" he chuckled. "I don't know. I'm not current on my vampire etiquette." He took a look in the basket. "I think this should just about do it," he said.

"That's all? There's tons more in there."

"Take any more and it'll rot before I can eat it." He offered her his hand up. "Come on."

They strolled quietly back to the mall, hand in hand. She could barely keep the smile off her face. She loved it when he took her hand this way, casually, like he'd held her hand for years. A sudden memory came back to her, she and Simon in a tent when she was a child, looking at the framed picture of him and Betty.

_You're holding hands._

_Yes. I liked to hold her hand. I loved her very much_.

She flushed. Bit her lip.

_Oh stop it, you enormous dork_, she chided herself.

Suddenly Simon stopped. Turned. "You hear that?" he whispered.

"No…?"

"Shhh…" he held a finger to his lips, looking around. Suddenly she heard a faint sound, one she couldn't place. A weird sort of high-pitched warbling.

"What is it?" she whispered.

"Gobble gobble gobble," he whispered back. "Turkeys." He released her hand and slowly crept forward towards the sound. She followed him to another backyard in which was a little red pantry of some kind, facing away from them. A moment passed and a female turkey strutted down a ramp and made a soft _globbleglobbleglobble_.

"Heh," he whispered. "They're living in a chicken hutch. Convenient."

He motioned for her to follow and crept up to the hutch. His attempt at stealth failed spectacularly, as two turkeys immediately noticed him and started squawking, which set the others off. They gathered around him, _globbl _-ing and pecking at his pants and shoes.

"Wow! There's seven of them!" Simon said to Marceline, beaming, surrounded by enraged birds.

"Wow! They're trying to kill you!"

"Aw. They're cute," he said, kicking at one who got too close for his liking. "Oh my god, Marcy, there's _eggs_ in here!"

"No, seriously dude, they're trying to kill you," she said, trying to kick them away from him. In return one of the big males flew at her. "Hey!" she yelled, swatting it away. "Fucker!" This set the others on her.

"Just hold them off for a sec while I grab these - ow!"

"Oh, you did _not_ just bite a hole through my new pants!" Marceline said. "Some fuckin' birds are gonna die right now!" she said, kicking and swatting at them. This only held them off for a moment, until they started launching themselves at her. In anger she reached out and grabbed one by the neck in midair, hard enough to break its spine, and started swinging at the other turkeys with its body.

"Got 'em! Let's get out of - Jesus! What did you _do_?" he said.

"This is what happens! This is what happens!" she yelled at the remaining turkeys. "Your friend is dead and I'm hitting you with him!"

"That's a female," Simon said, taking her by the arm. "Come on, lets get out of here, Madam Bathory."

All in all he recovered seven eggs, big and brown speckled, two of which he giddily scrambled in a pan on the hot plate. "The trick," he said, "is to cook them very very slowly, on the lowest heat possible. If it takes twenty minutes you're doing it right. They come out all creamy and just - oh man, it's been years. Years!"

"Well that makes it worth it," she said wryly, sewing the hole the bird tore in her pants.

"Yep," Simon now said, sitting with his back against the arm of the couch. "They were delicious too."

"You're welcome," she replied, strumming the guitar.

"Thank you for running interference. Oh, and for the one you killed. Did you just catch it in the air and snap its neck?"

She nodded. "Sure did. That'll teach 'em."

"Heh. Gotta carve that one up too, now. Food everywhere, lately!" His face grew thoughtful. He sighed. "You know, it's strange - going from this life where you work, where you obsess about things people made hundreds of years ago, and you get concerned about politics and theory and getting published, all these abstractions - going from that to a life where your main concern is food. Surviving. I used to look at political websites and argue on archeology message boards and I'd get upset about it, I'd invest myself in it, and it all seems so ridiculous now. I … I used to have this whole life. Now I'm just thrilled to taste an egg again."

She thought about this. "I guess it puts things in perspective."

He nodded. "Before you came back, I thought this was … well, pretty much it for me. This life. Honestly. I figured I was lucky if I had another five years before something finally ate me. Five years spending most of my time scavenging, living down here, what … reading? Going nuts with no one to talk to? The last human alive. Alone. Forever." He shook his head. "At one point I seriously considered-" He stopped suddenly, as though he'd said too much.

"Killing yourself?" she said softly.

He flinched. Looked at his hands. "Yeah. And it was more than one point, it was several points. Daily. Sometimes," he said, sounding ashamed.

She nodded. "I think anyone would."

"I - well I don't know about that. Seem cowardly to me. Ungrateful."

"Naw. It's okay, Simon," she said, giving his foot a squeeze. "It's okay. I don't blame you." She smiled at him, then pushed her hair behind her ear and returned to tuning the guitar. When he didn't respond she looked up to see him gazing softly at her in a way that caught her breath.

"What?"

"Ah. Nothing," he said and sighed. "I'm just really glad I didn't."

She gave him a crooked smile. "Yeah. Me too."

They both flushed. Looked away.

"Can you, uh … can you hand me that guitar pick by your cup?" she asked.

"Certainly, madam," he said, shifting and leaning forward to hand it to her. When he settled back into place his leg pressed against hers. She waited for him to move it. When he didn't she quickly glanced up at him. His eyes were locked on his book, his face rosy. She could feel his heart beating. The timbre of the blood pounding through his veins was not one of a relaxed man.

She looked back down at her guitar, strumming at it, shifting slightly so her leg settled more comfortably against his.

And so they sat, both pretending to be absorbed in their objects, both aflame.

**000**

Simon stayed in the generator room a bit longer each morning.

He usually did his hour on the bicycle first thing in the morning before Marceline woke. He would slip quietly into the bathroom to take a shower afterward, smelling like clean sweat, the pheromones enough to wake her from a dead sleep and send her crashing back down to the bed. She would roll over and pretend to sleep, breathlessly listening to him retrieve the day's clothes from the dresser and slip out into the living room to dress. Though she didn't entirely mind this morning torture delayed a few extra minutes, she began to worry that perhaps Simon had begun avoiding her again. But no, this didn't seem to be the case, as his behavior didn't change other than that. Just a bit of extra time in the generator room, that was all.

_Maybe he's just burning off steam_, she thought. _Maybe I should too, probably couldn't hurt._

One of the main disadvantages to living as they did was cabin fever. The basement floors and walls were concrete and despite Simon's attempts to make it homey it still had a dank, cold sort of miasma to it. The only outdoor light seeped in from thin rectangular windows near the ceiling, through which, if one looked at the right angle, a few dying blades of grass and weeds could be seen. These windows sent slats of slowly moving light across the living room over the course of the day, beams Marceline found herself ducking around like a Hollywood bank robber avoiding security lasers.

"You know, we can plug those windows up if you want," Simon said one afternoon, watching her bob and weave through the living room with a half drained length of previously red extension cord.

"Yeah but then there'd be no natural light in here at all," she said.

He chuckled. "I can honestly say I never would have imagined natural light would be such a huge concern to a vampire."

"We're just _people_," she said pointedly.

"No, I know, I - " he hesitated. "Sorry. Did that come off … racist?"

"I wouldn't say racist, just … more like stereotyping."

"Oh," Simon said, turning bright red. "I'm sorry. I'm an ass."

Marceline broke into a crooked smile and laughed. She gave Simon and quick hug, ruffling his hair. "You're such freakin' _dork_."

He gave her a quick squeeze back. "That's accurate."

They lingered, holding one another just a moment longer than called for, but not long enough for that creeping, soft sort of drowsiness to climb all the way up her spine and make her want to simply melt into him. When he released her it was as though her body softly whimpered in disappointment. She shook it off.

Simon cleared his throat, looking around the basement. "You know. You're right. It is a little dark and dank in here. I mean it always has been, but I've never been sure what to do about it. Do you have any suggestions?"

"Oh what, we're doing the 'woman's touch' thing now? Just because I'm a girl means I automatically know how to make a place all cute and snuggly, is that it? Wow, you're just a stereotype machine today."

"Oh god damn it," Simon said. "I'm -I'm sorry -I"

"Naw, I'm just fucking with you, dorkus," she said. "I probably could do something, but really light is the whole problem here, and I don't think we can get much more of it than we have."

"Oh, we'll just get some C4, blast that wall down, problem solved," he said, chuckling. "Hm. Well. Sometimes when I get restless I just rearrange the entire house. Move all the furniture around."

"I don't know," she said, looking around. "I don't really see a better place for everything."

"We could clean? Early spring cleaning?"

"Meh."

"Actually wait, I know!" he said, going to the bedroom. "You need some closet space, all your stuff is still in bags on the floor, that won't do." He went to his closet, which was not much more than a curtain hanging from the ceiling in front of a dresser and a clothing rack, and started emptying his stuff out of it.

'What are you doing?"

"Making room!" he said.

"Where's your stuff gonna go?"

"One thing I have plenty of is storage, don't worry about it."

"Dude, I don't want to like evict you from your bedroom."

"You're not! You take it Marcy, I want you to have your own space." He pecked her on the cheek as he passed her to take a pile of clothes to a storage closet. "This is your home too."

"I -" she began to protest, but stopped when she saw how happy it made him to be doing his for her. "Well. Okay. Thank you."

"You're welcome!"

"Where will you sleep, though?"

"The couch is fine for now, but there's a couple rooms off the kitchen that I can connect to the breaker no problem. I'll take one of those. Eventually. In all honesty there's no bed on earth as comfortable as that couch."

She nodded. "Yeah. Well. Let me help you with your stuff. And after that we'll do the drill. Okay?"

The drill was their midday ritual. The photo wall, once finished, stretched from the living room to two thirds of the way down the hall, encasing them in a tunnel of images. She pointed at random photographs, making him tell her who was in it, where it was taken, the significance of the event, anything he could remember. Though she didn't yet know enough to check his accuracy she was learning. This afternoon they stopped after about twenty five photos.

"Checks out," she said. "Clean bill of health for today, soldier."

He gave a salute. "Glad to hear it. I appreciate this, Marcy. Really."

She waved her hand dismissively. "It's fine. It takes like half an hour."

"No, I mean for everything you've done. For caring so much. So I uh … well, I have a present for you. To say thank you."

He eyebrows raised. "Ooh!"

He grinned. "Go sit down," he said, and went down to the generator room. He returned with a rectangular black brick. He set it onto the coffee table before her, then inserted another, smaller black brick into a vertical slot on the front.

"What is it?" she asked.

He pressed a button on the smaller brick and a small screen lit up. "This," he said, "is an iPod."

"A what now?"

"A music player. You said you wanted to actually hear the music you've been learning, so I've been doing fifteen minutes extra on the generator every day so I could charge this for you."

She smiled. "So _that's_ what you've been doing in there!"

"You noticed? You're usually asleep."

She blinked, recalling the rush of pheromones he brought in with him every morning. "I uh…I'm a light sleeper."

"Have I been waking you?"

She waved it off. "It's fine. I'm excited for this though! Thank you!"

"You're welcome! Used the last of the batteries for the speakers, too."

"Well shit, we'd better make it worth it then. Wanna hit the whiskey?"

"Yeah, I think I could do that," he said, fiddling with the music player.

She went to the pantry and retrieved a bottle of Jack Daniel's and two glasses.

"No no, not that," Simon said. "If this is going to be a proper celebration we should drink the top shelf stuff."

She hovered, floating up to see the top shelf of the pantry. "Is it up here?"

"No, it's a figure of speech. _Dorkus_."

"Oh, you _got_ me!" she said, grinning.

"Boom! Stealth bomber! It's in the kitchen. I'll get it." He rose from the table and returned a moment later with a different bottle, this one flat on one side and curved on the other, with a gold embossed label and a red wax seal. "This stuff is … wow, forty four years old by now. Lifted it from a liquor store a while back. Was one of the only bottles left, funnily enough. It was behind the register in a locked cabinet, figured it was something special."

Marceline set the glasses down on the table and sat on the couch. "The liquor store was totally ransacked? Why does that not surprise me?"

"Yeah, that was one of the first things to go. And then there were the idiots stealing big screen TV's. You wouldn't believe how long that lasted. I was appalled. People dying of radiation poisoning, nothing electrical worked since the EMP took the grid out, and still you'd have these complete wastes of air in sweatpants breaking into electronics stores stealing big screen TVs and DVD players. Like what, do you think this is going to end, you idiot? Do you think you'll just wake up and everything will be normal again, and you can just going back to watching prime time garbage on your brand new TV? I just …" he shook is head. "This is why sometimes I think the war was a good thing. Ugh. Pour me one, would you?"

"Yes sir," Marceline said.

"Okay, let's get this show on the road," he said. The player made a pleasant ticking noise and he scrolled through the titles. "Wow …. Oh wow! Man, I forgot I had so much _music! _Oh wow, and "This American Life" too. "Radiolab"! This is great, you'll love those, they were so _interesting_. Heh. Anyway! What do you want to hear first!" He paused for a moment, waiting for a reply. "Marcy?" He glanced at her. "What are you smiling about?"

She shrugged. "Nothing, I just like seeing you all excited about stuff. It's cute."

"Oh I'm cute now, am I? I thought I was a dorkus."

"You are. You're a cute dorkus. Drink your drink," she said, handing him a glass. "And let's start with Amy Winehouse."

"You got it," he said, scrolling up to her name. "Annnnd - play!"

He pressed the button. Nothing happened.

"….play!" he said again, and again nothing. "What the…" he muttered, jabbing at buttons. "I'll restart it. Fucking _Apple._"

"Apples?"

"Apple. Software company that made this little piece of crap. Sorry. I hate it when electronics don't work. I always meant to see if I could just wipe the drive of one of these and put a Linux OS on it, but I never got around to it. Christ, iTunes was such a nightmare."

Marceline laughed. "You're so worked up."

"Heh. So I am. Whip out an iPod and suddenly I'm back in full first-world-problems mode. Okay, that should just do it," he said, plugging the player back into the speakers. A moment later music filled the room, a crunchy synthesizer and a curling, sassy voice, so sudden they both flinched.

"Ha!" Simon said.

"Awesome! Cheers!" Marceline said. They clinked their glasses and threw them back. Marceline winced and coughed. "Oh wow, her voice is like … really … unusual."

"Yeah, she's got that vocal fry happening. Wow, this is a trip, hearing this after all this time."

"Why didn't you ever do this before? Charge the Peapod?"

"iPod," he said, grinning. "Whatever, it's now a Peapod. Guess I never thought to."

"That's a shame. If I was stuck by myself I'd play a lot of music and just sing and dance around in my underpants constantly."

"You're free to do that now," Simon said.

She laughed and blushed, smacking him lightly on the arm. "Yeah you'd like that, wouldn't you?"

"I can think of worse things. Pretty little cute girl dancing around my house."

She bit her bottom lip and blushed furiously.

"Oh. Sorry," Simon said. "I'm making you uncomfortable."

She shook her head. "No you're not."

He looked slightly taken aback, eyebrows raised. "I'm not?" he asked softly.

She gave a shy, crooked smile, then jumped slightly. "Oh! That line! I love that line!" she said, pointing at the player.

"Which?"

"Where she says 'life is like a pipe, and I'm a tiny penny rolling up the walls inside.' That's like _brilliant_. Glob. I know _exactly_ what she's talking about."

Simon nodded. "Yeah," he said. "Me too. Cheers," he said, clinking his glass to hers and throwing it back. Marceline did the same, but winced and coughed.

"How do you do that?" she asked.

"What?"

"Just hit the whiskey without even flinching."

He laughed. "I'm a man in my fifties. Comes with the territory."

"I'm a woman and I'm over a thousand and I still wince. I think that rules out age. Must be the penis."

Simon, mid-sip, chortled and nearly spat. His eyes watered. He cleared his throat and said, "Neither, really. Pretty sure I can throw back whiskey because I have a lot of practice. From, uh. Well. After Betty."

"No!" Marceline exclaimed.

He blinked. "No…?"

"No - " she nearly said _no talking about Betty_, but at the last minute she changed it to, "No talking about sad stuff. Only happy stuff. We're listening to music and having whiskey and being happy tonight. Okay?"

He shrugged. "Deal."

The clinked glasses and drank.

"Put Pink Floyd on," she said. "I want to hear your song."

"Sure, but that will definitely make me sad."

"No it won't because you're going to dance with me," she said, rising from the couch and extending her hand to him. "Come on."

He chuckled. "All right Princess," he said. He took her hand and rose, but stumbled anyway.

"So graceful," she teased.

"Graceful like a donkey," he said. "Not a very good dancer, sorry if I step on your feet."

"You're not gonna step on my feet, you enormous nerd," she said softly, putting one hand on his shoulder and the other in his hand. He put his hand haltingly on her waist and she stepped closer, closing the small distance between them. "Is this it?" she asked.

"Hm?"

"Sounds like a TV?"

"Oh. Yeah that's just the intro. There it goes."

They listened together in silence for a moment, swaying. Marceline's eyes went unfocused and thoughtful as she listened. "Wow," she said softly. "I feel like I wasn't even close."

"What? No! You sing it perfectly, Marcy."

She shook her head. "No I don't, I have the chord change all wrong, and - "

"Hey," he said, and tucked her hair behind her ear. "I like the way you sing it."

"…thanks," she said softly.

He smiled, then leaned in and gave her quick, polite peck on the lips. She paused, then pecked him back, to which he responded in kind, and on the fourth exchange they met in the middle, catching one another in a soft, lingering kiss that lasted beyond the point of innocence. Sensing this they slowly broke the kiss and stood there, motionless, each waiting for the other to break the silence.

"I'm … I'm sorry," Simon whispered, his voice hoarse. "I shouldn't have … done … that."

"I kissed you back," she said softly.

"I … " he said , "I'm sorry if I made you feel like … like you had to."

"What?"

"Oh god," he said, releasing her. "I don't want you to feel - I've been trying -I've been afraid of making you feel - um - pressured into … into doing things you don't actually want to do, or feeling like you owe me, or - or anything. Because you don't. Ever. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have - done that."

"We kissed each other," she said. "We both did."

"Well, whoever did it, it's - "

"No, I mean … I mean it was _mutual_, Simon."

He finally glanced up at her. It was only for a moment, but it was long enough for Marceline to see his desire, there and present and clear in his eyes.

"I -" he began, but didn't finish, words escaping him. "It - it was?" he said, his voice husky and barely audible.

Shaking, Marceline leaned her forehead against his, cupping his face in her hand. "Yeah," she whispered. "It was."

He closed his eyes and they remained that way for a long moment. She titled her face up slightly, almost nuzzling him, gently touching her lips to his. He began to respond, ever so slightly returning the gesture, but gave a sudden sharp intake of break and broke away, his eyes still shut, wincing.

"_Marceline_," he said urgently. "I -I don't know if… "

"You want me?" she asked, her voice small

"What?" he asked, incredulous, opening his eyes. "Oh my god, I - I do - my god, more than _anything, _you have no idea-" he stopped here, eyes widening as though he'd spoken out of turn. When she smiled he did too, crookedly, almost disbelieving, but then shut his eyes and shook his head. "No, I - I do, god, but I'm - I'm not sure if it's me, or … or the crown."

"Oh," she said. "Wow."

"Yeah, so. Yeah. There's that," he said, exhaling, as though it was a relief to have said it.

She considered this for a long moment.

"Well," she finally said, "how do you feel about me?"

He balked. "I - uh. Whoa."

"No, I mean like … does it feel _bad_? Like, violent? Hateful?"

"It -" he began, startled. "No. Not … not at all. Its … it's nice. Nice feelings."

"Then it's not the crown."

"But you said I- he - tried to -"

"He did, but it wasn't because he liked me. I'm pretty sure he hated me. He wanted to hurt me, Simon. It wasn't … it wasn't this. It wasn't _you_. You're sweet and wonderful and I want you so bad it's killing me," she said, the words running out of her. "For like weeks now, it's - it's - I can't take it anymore, it's kill -"

In one motion he stepped forward, took her by the back of the neck, and kissed her.

Almost shocked, she hunched her shoulders and put her hands on his face, holding it, kissing him back. He wrapped his arms around her, leaned into her, clutching her so tightly that she nearly lost her balance and tipped backward. She took her hands from his face and wrapped them around his neck, then sank fully into the kiss, running her hands through his hair as he softly parted her lips with his tongue, and intrusion she accepted happily. His hands moved down to her bottom and lingered there for a moment before he hunched slightly and picked her up. She made a slight sound of surprise and wrapped her legs around his waist, letting him carry her into the bedroom and tip her down onto the bed.

She took him by the shirt, drawing him down upon her, kissing him fiercely, his white hair curtaining around her face. He slid his hands beneath her and pressed his body to hers, kissed her jaw. When she turned her head to let him kiss her neck she looked out the bedroom door and into the living room, where a red glint caught her eye: the crown, sitting on the arm of the couch, right in her line of sight.

She tried to stretch, to kick the door closed, but she couldn't reach and only succeeding in flailing her leg in the air.

"What is it?" Simon asked against her neck.

"Close the door," she whispered.

He lifted himself off her, kicked the door closed, and pressed himself against her again, this time using his leverage to push the two of them further up onto the bed, and his hips into hers. She arched slightly, pressing herself to his stiffness, and he gasped slightly into her ear before covering her mouth with his. She took his bottom lip between hers, then slid her tongue into his mouth. They ground together until she gave a soft cry and clawed at his shirt, trying to lift it up and over his head, which he did for her in one swift motion. She pulled him back down to her, running her hands along the skin of his back, smooth and cool. He drove his hands underneath her, beneath her shirt, to her bra. She arched to let him unhook it, which he did after only a moment of fumbling, and brought his hands round to cup her breasts. Marceline gasped and closed her eyes, biting her bottom lip, savoring his touch, finally feeling what she'd wanted so badly to feel for weeks, every time she looked at his agile, careful hands. She wrapped her legs even tighter around his waist, using her calves to push him more firmly against her.

He tugged at her bra, trying to take it off, but her shirt was still on. She chuckled softly and tried to take it off herself, but her arms were restricted enough by her bra straps that she ended up fumbling, and it became something of a team effort.

"Yeah that was - bad - planning," he breathed and she laughed softy as he lifted her shirt up over her head, and over her hair, which was a considerable effort in and of itself. "_Yeesh,_" he said, trying to pull all five feet of her hair through the neck of her shirt quickly, but without hurting her. As he did this she slid her bra off and tossed it aside.

"Jeez," he said, chuckling, when he finally freed her from the shirt. She felt momentarily shy, shirtless and bare before him. With the gentlest of touches he put his fingertips to her breast and ran his hand up through her hair at her scalp, then gently seized it and lifted her mouth to his. She sighed, swooned, and as their bare skin made contact something changed and seemed to slow, to become more real. Their kisses turned from passionate to sweet, to vulnerable, at the sudden reality of each other. He rested his forehead against hers. They just held each other for a long moment, still, and looked into one another's eyes.

There was something searching in his look. She looked up into his white eyes and put her hand to his face, to his soft beard. She cupped his cheek sweetly and smiled, her eyelids heavy, then gave him a soft kiss. He gave a slow, catlike blink and returned it. They sank into one another once more, into a drowsy dreaminess, pushing his hips up into hers for a long moment before moving to kiss her throat and chest, her breast, taking her nipple gently between his teeth as he slid his hand down to rest on the waist of her pants. She cried out and clutched him, arching to allow him to slide her pants and underwear off and to the floor. She ran her hands through his hair and he moved to kiss her other breast, taking his own pants off, then sucked her nipple for a moment before leaving it with gentle kiss and moving up and atop her again.

She wrapped herself around him eagerly, ready, but he paused, briefly resting his forehead in the crook of her shoulder. He nuzzled and kissed her neck, moving so he rested, firm, just against her entrance. He gave a little gasp and shuddered at this contact. She purred and arched into him, pressing against him, encouraging him to enter her. He lingered there for a moment longer before acquiescing, and slowly slid inside her.

"_Ah_," he breathed, his body tensing.

Marceline could not held herself, could not hold back any longer. She nipped and sucked at his neck, writhing around him as he braced himself on his elbows and began thrusting. She ran her hands along his back and in his hair, kissing him madly anywhere her lips could reach, pushing her hips against his as hard as she could. He gave a ragged gasp and reached back to clutch her thigh, pushing her leg up over his hip so he could enter her more deeply, his thrusts growing urgent. The changed sensation hit her and she gasped as she came, a climax that happened so suddenly and hit so hard that she went into it with a sense of wild bewilderment, crying out as much from pleasure as from astonishment.

Hearing this Simon clutched her and moaned, pressed his face along her shoulder and neck like a cat and moaned again, a twisting, helpless sort of moan of pleasure that was nearing unbearable. He jerked her thigh upward and gave a series of final quick, hard thrusts before panting "Oh god … oh _god,_" into her ear, and with a broken cry pressed deeply inside her as he could, his body stiff, shuddering for a long moment as he came. She clutched him in his moment of agony, softly kissed his face until he finally broke, panting, his body going loose as he gave a few last gentle thrusts and finally rested his face in her neck.

"Wow," he said, catching his breath. "Wow wowzers."

She chuckled softly, filled with adoration that at this tender moment he'd managed to say the dorkiest thing she'd ever heard after sex. "Wow wowzers, huh?" she asked softly, kissing his head.

"Yeah," he said. "Buh. Phew."

"You okay?"

"Yeah, I. Yeah. Just - gimme a sec," he said, moving next to her, keeping one arm around her waist. He laughed. "My ears popped," he said. "Everything sounds weird."

"You okay?" she asked again.

"I'm fine. I'm great, it's just funny."

She turns on her side to face him. "Hold your nose and blow. Yawn or something."

He held his nose shut and puffed out his cheeks.

Marceline burst out laughing. "Oh my god, you are such an enormous _dork!_"

He laughed, blowing the air out of his cheeks in one go. He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her face. "Hush, you," he said, then reached down to pull the sheet up over them. She sighed and snuggled up to his chest, content as a kitten. They lay this way quietly for a while, listening to the soft hum the generator sent through the walls.

"_Dorkus_," she finally whispered into the silence, and gave her a playful smack on the head.

"I prefer silly. You used to say I was silly. 'You're _so_ silly, Simon.'"

"I can say it again. You're _so_ silly, Simon."

"Yeah, I suppose so," he said, and kissed her forehead.

After a moment his face fell. A brief look of horror, then he winced.

"Hey. What is it?" she asked.

He didn't reply. Looked away.

"Simon…?" she asked, growing anxious.

"I -no, I …" his brow furrowed. "It's um. It's dumb. Probably. Maybe. I don't know. I mean is this - I mean on a scale of one to "Deliverance", how wrong is this?"

"Huh?"

"I mean - I - before. I was - you were … a little kid, and I took care of you," he said haltingly. "And now - "

"Ohhhh," Marceline said, then gave an evil grin. "Welp. Too late now!"

"Oh geez," he said and laughed, but it was an uneasy laugh.

"But no, seriously," she said, rolling to face him, taking his hands in hers. "Don't worry. Now's what matters."

He looked unconvinced. "Yeah, I. Yeah. I mean. It's dumb. Forget about it."

"Well, no," Marceline replied. "Wanna know what I think?"

"Sure."

"I think it's like … considering all the universes and possibilities and all that … I think that in any universe we're both in we're going to be important to one another. If you're an adult and I'm a child you'll be like a dad, and if I'm grown up and you're a kid I'll be like your mom, if we're both kids we'll be best friends, and if we're both adults we'll be together." She raised his hand, pressed it to her lips, and held it there for a long moment. "I think one way or another I'm supposed to belong to you and you're supposed to belong to me. We're like … a law of the universe, or something."

He took this in, considered it. After a moment he seemed to come to conclusion. He wrapped his arms around her and titled her chin up to kiss him.

"Yeah," he said, tucking her hair behind her hair. "I loved you then and I love you now. It's not a big deal."

She smiled, nodded, and kissed him back.

**000**


	13. down with living dangerously

_(Various author's notes: For those of you who liked the crown's appearance in chapter 10, I have some good news. For one, due to popular demand there is a rewrite of Everything You Know Is Wrong, based on what would have happened had Marceline accepted the Crown's advances. People seemed AWFULLY curious, hee hee. You can find that tale on my author page. There is also an ask blog on Tumblr called AskCrownModeSimon, where you can converse with him if you wish. You can find that here: ( /18LuucI) There is another project in the works concerning CMS (as he's come to be known) as well. People really seem to like him and I am in the business of giving my readers what they want. In any case I hope you enjoy the added material, the ask blog, and this new chapter. Happy reading, readers!)_

**chapter thirteen**

**down with living dangerously**

The next morning Simon awoke to an empty bed.

"Marcy?" he asked, sounding slightly panicked.

"Hey!" she said, elbowing her way through the door carrying a plate, flushed and smiling. "Made you breakfast!"

"Oh!" he said, putting a hand on his chest. "Phew."

"What?" she asked, climbing onto the bed. "Did you think I bailed or something?"

He shook his head. "I - don't know. Heh." He pulled her into a kiss. "Glad you're here is all."

"Where would I go, silly? Anyway, eat up. These eggs took thirty damn minutes."

"Oh! Thank you!" he took a bite. "Ah, they're perfect."

She smiled and kissed his shoulder, then paused. "Hey, what's this?" she asked, tapping the back of his right shoulder.

"A tattoo."

"Well yeah, duh. What is it?" She drew her finger along it, a circle filled with red, green, and yellow points.

"It's the compass from the Piri Reis map. I uh … I got it after the crown. When I felt I was losing my way. I was drunk and emotional. Kinda dumb, really."

"No. The linework's nice, but if you were losing your way, why did you put it somewhere you couldn't see it?"

He chuckled, then sighed. "Because that's…just something I'd do."

"Aw. Well," she began, putting her arms around him and sliding a hand along his thigh. "Finish your eggs and there's something else you can do."

"I see," he said, grinning. "It's going to be like _that_, is it?"

She shrugged. "I'm stuck with the body of a nineteen year old. Comes with the territory."

"I have absolutely no problem with this."

And, all things considered, there wasn't much else to do.

Weeks went by and the bedroom replaced the living room as the center of the house. Simon moved his belongings back in and Marceline tried to decorate, to make it into a cozy soft space instead of the stark, utilitarian sleeping chamber of a man who'd been entirely alone for years. On one of her jaunts around the abandoned mall she found twinkling Christmas lights, but Simon didn't want to tax the small power reserves of the generator, so instead she returned to the Anthropolgie store and picked up curtains and pillows, framed art and scented candles. In the end it created a warm, gypsy-tent type effect.

"What do you think?" she asked, presenting the finished room, replete with draperies and lit candles.

"It looks like a very sweet, very girly fire hazard," Simon said.

"Thanks?"

He nodded. "I'm down with living dangerously."

"Oh I _noticed_," she said indulgently, and kissed him. He chuckled and picked her up, depositing her in the bed. This was where they spent most of their time. Together in the bed, talking or making love, reading or listening to music, with occasional forays to the kitchen, and back again to the bed. At Marceline's request the crown lived in the mostly abandoned living room, sitting on the kitchen table with no view into the bedroom. She'd rather it were somewhere she couldn't see it at all, but when she asked Simon to put it in the pantry and shut the door he found himself unable to do so without a sense of rising panic.

"I feel like _I'm_ in there," he said, rescuing the crown from its dark pantry prison after a mere two minutes. "Like it's dark and I can't hear or see or breathe. I'm sorry, Marcy. I … I don't think I can do it. It doesn't have to be near us but it has to be at least out."

She acquiesced, making up for this intrusion in her own small ways. One afternoon, clad only in a bra and underpants, she wandered out to the living room to find something red to eat. Out of the corner of her eye the jewels in the crown glinted and for a split second she swore she felt eyes on her, invasive and leering. She found a red plastic plate, quickly drained it, then turned on her heel to face the crown.

"Like what you see?" she asked it. Grinning, she strutted past, lifting two middle fingers to it. "Take a good look while you can, fucker," she said, and slammed the bedroom door behind her. This led to a habit of holding a middle finger towards the crown whenever it was in view, a behavior that Simon seemed unsure whether he found offensive or hilarious, a judgment that changed with his mood. However he found it, it was clear it was not going to stop, so he shrugged and accepted it. Sometimes, however, it seemed that the the small act of aggression towards the crown doubled back on her and she found herself becoming upset, so he calmed her by rubbing her back or brushing her hair, something she loved but took upwards of an hour.

"How do you do this every day?" he asked, combing through the third of the seven sections into which he'd separated her hair. "Marcy? Oh. You're asleep. And _drooling_. You're asleep and drooling. Well fine then, I'm off duty," he said, then lay down next to her for a nap. A few hours later they awoke and made love in the gypsy bed, around which, over time, Marceline hung gradually heavier curtains like something out of a Middle Eastern fairytale. She didn't tell Simon that she did this more for a sense or privacy than for aesthetics. Even with the door closed sometimes she could swear she felt the crown watching them, leering at her, and she hated that intrusion on what was quickly becoming the best sex of her life.

Though she'd certainly had more intense or dramatic or mysterious lovers, Simon outpaced them all. She'd never felt so safe, been touched with such love. Ash quickly grew tired of showing off after the first ten minutes and focused on himself, and though things with Bonnibel started off exciting the weight of their imploding relationship quickly soured things physically. She had other lovers over the years, other relationships, all brief and fairly casual, Ash having destroyed her ability to trust too deeply, to feel too much. Something about Simon dissolved this barrier entirely. He left her breathless and weepy. It was as though he ran a cool salve through the cracks in her heart with the pure intensity of his love for her, obvious and apparent in every move he made. He touched her with a gentle attentiveness and experienced confidence that took her breath away, made her melt in his arms, able to ride out her own pleasure without the kind of distraction which came from insecurity and fear.

When she turned her attention to him it was another new experience. With Ash she'd felt she'd had to perform, and likewise with Bonnibel, Marceline having been the more experienced of the two by miles. But with Simon she didn't feel as though she had anything to prove, it was just him, she loved him, she wanted him to feel good. It was in no way about her, a distinction that amazed her - how often had she been with someone, telling herself she was focused on them, while she was in reality focused on herself, on what they would think of her afterwards? Not so with Simon. When she focused on him she did so like a laser, paying attention to his every twitch and gasp to the point where she was as aroused by touching him as she was by being touched, a dissolution that was entirely novel to her. There was no performance, no ego, just her and the man she loved, whom to be held by was akin to being wrapped in a blanket fresh out of the dryer, and she'd never before felt so whole and protected.

Other than that change, enormous and happily preoccupying as it was, life went on as normal. They hunted, read, scavenged in the mall and joked around, got drunk and danced to Daft Punk, picked cabbages and stole turkey eggs, went on walks through the woods. There was a marked decrease in the amount of monsters hanging around, which led Marceline to believe that her show of strength and claim of dominion over the land had taken.

"What does that mean, really?" Simon asked as they strolled through the forest her one heavily overcast afternoon, so cloudy Marceline didn't bother to bring her umbrella along. "When you claim dominion?"

She shrugged. "Were there mice and roaches and stuff when you moved into the mall basement?"

"A few."

"Like that. I live here now, I'm cleaning up the place and turning on the lights, so you'd best crawl back into whatever hole you crawled out of or I'll make your life really difficult."

"Well that's handy," he said.

"Being a half demon vampire does have benefits."

He laughed, a high, sudden laugh of disbelief.

"What?" she asked.

"Sorry, I just - sorry. I guess it'll just take some time before I get used to hearing that and having it be true."

She smirked. "I'm pretty sure I can speed that process up a bit," she said, taking him by the shoulders.

"What are you-" he began, but it was too late. Marceline morphed and swelled and grew, sprouting fur and wings. With one clawed hand she tossed the terrified Simon onto her back and shouted "Hang on!" as she flapped her great leathery wings and propelled them up and over the forest. She felt his hand twisting into her fur, gripping, but he said curiously little.

"You okay?" she asked as they sailed over the ruins of Los Angeles.

In response he made a garbled, yet high-pitched noise that sounded like an aborted attempt at speech.

She laughed. "Are you shitting yourself back there?"

"Yes," he squeaked.

"Wanna go down?"

"_Yes_."

She made an effort to descend gradually, finally landing them on an abandoned freeway overpass littered with broken glass and rusted out cars. Simon slid off her back and onto the asphalt, where he rolled and gasped and pressed a hand to his chest.

"Aw, I'm sorry," she said, shrinking back into her normal self and kneeling beside him. "I didn't mean to scare you."

"A little warning would have been nice," he said after a long moment. "That's all."

"Are you scared of heights?"

"I am _now_."

She smiled and stroked his back. "Well, you'll get over it. In Ooo you fly all the time."

"Heh," he said, leaning back on his knees, catching his breath. "Heh. Is that so? Well maybe in a thousand years I'll have recovered from the shock of my first bat ride. Yeesh."

She smiled. "Aw, your poor thing. Here, I'll sit on you," she said, crawling into his lap facing him. She took his face between her hands and kissed him. "Better?"

"Hm. Getting there," he said. He put his arms around her and kissed her shoulder, then her neck.

"Your heart's still racing," she said.

"Heh. For a different reason now, I think."

"Mission accomplished!" Marceline said, holding her arms up in victory.

He laughed. "Hush, you. Mmm," he said, kissing her. They carried on this way for a while, until Simon had a hand up her shirt, at which point he laughed against her mouth.

"What?" she asked sleepily.

"Ring ring! Oh hi mom. What am I doing? Oh, nothing, just getting to second base with a really hot half demon vampire girl next to a rusted out car on the 99, you know, nothing spec-"

There was a loud crash. They both jumped.

"What was that?" Marceline asked asked.

"Mutants," Simon said, his joking manner suddenly entirely gone, replaced by a soldier's. He unwound himself from her. "We're outside the forest, I take it you don't have dominion here?"

"Nope."

They went silent, listening. A slimy grunt sounded from behind them, and another to the left.

"There's at least six," Simon said softly, calmly, helping her to her feet. "There, there, and there."

"I'll bat out, let's bail," she whispered. "Try not to freak this time."

"You got it," he said.

She pushed her form outward, sprouting fur and wings, and when she felt Simon climb aboard she lifted off into the air, one great flap, then two -

Then _burning_.

The world erupted into whiteness like an overexposed photograph and she shrieked, her skin flaying, falling to the ground. They fell only twenty feet, but it felt like forever from the sudden burst of sun from behind the clouds to the final impact, the crack of bone and reek of burnt fur, the grind of asphalt into burnt skin. Simon rolled off her, shouting, but she couldn't see or hear, her world reduced to the searing of meat. She felt hands on her arms, on her skin - when had she melted back into a human form ? - and Simon pushing, rolling her into darkness as she screamed, the slimy grunting and growling growing ever closer.

When she opened her eyes she couldn't see, her vision red and flashing with afterimages, but she knew she was in a small dark space; beneath a truck, she quickly realized. Something exploded into the asphalt next to the vehicle. She gasped and jumped, cold flecks and rubble hitting her face. Shoved into the asphalt was a thick spear of solid ice, upon which was impaled a slime monster.

From outside came maniacal laughter.

"Shit," she said.

"That was mutant-kabobs, ladies and gentlemen!" came Simon's voice, high and spirited and insane. "Next up - bowling for slimeballs!" He erupted in laughter as a huge ball of ice rolled past her. She watched as it took out rusted cars, flattening them like cardboard, along with the clutch of mutants which climbed on them, who popped like grapes.

"HA! Strike!" he sang from somewhere above her. With a sudden grunt of effort the ice spear and the mutant upon it was wrenched up and out of the asphalt, then thrown aside like a toy, and with a sudden bust of air Simon landed, his shoes suddenly slamming into view. Marceline felt a wave of panic. He dropped to a kneel and peeked under the car, his eyes solid white, mouth in a sharp-toothed joker's grin.

"What'cha doin' under here, Princess?" he said, and giggled.

She swallowed. "Waiting for you," she said. To her relief he was more Ice King than the man she'd met that day in the kitchen, more silly than frightening. She smiled at him.

"Waiting for me? You don't say!" he said, then lay on his side on the ground. "Well. Here I … am …?"

His expression changed. Grew suddenly meaner.

Her heart pounded.

"You," he hissed. "I know _you_."

"I'm Marcy," she said quickly. "I love you."

"You _took something_ from me," he insisted, his expression darkening. "Something important. Give it _back!_"

With a grimace he reached under the car, swiping for her face. Thinking fast, she grabbed his clawed hand and kissed it. "I didn't take anything from you, Simon. I love you," she said, trying to keep the fear from her voice. "I _love_ you and your name is Simon Andres Petrikov. Your parents were Amora-Rose and Vlasij Petrikov. Remember? I'm Marceline. I love you. I'm _in love_ with you. We slept together this morning. Do you remember being in bed with me this morning? Remember kissing me? I'm Marceline, and you love me."

This gave him pause. He peered at her.

"Remember?" she asked.

"I … I …" he said. She could see him fighting, see it in his eyes.

She kissed his hand again. "I'm Marceline. Marcy. I love you. I love you more than I've ever loved anyone in my life. Come back, Simon. I need you. You have to come back now. Okay?"

He blinked. "…Oh," he said. "Hey."

"Hey," she said.

He looked up. Recognized her. "Why are you .. under here?"

She swallowed. "Simon, take the crown off."

He looked at her burnt arm, dazed. "You're hurt."

"Simon, _take the crown off_."

"Huh? Ah!" he exclaimed, and slapped the crown off his head. He watched it roll away for a second then turned back to her. "Wait, before I lose it," he said, taking her wrist. Before she could pull away he spread a thin layer of frost over her arms and shoulders and neck, soothing the skin the sun seared. Marcelince sighed in relief.

"Did I hurt you?" he asked quickly, wincing, not wanting to know the answer.

"No," she said. "No, you didn't. You did good." Her lower lip quivered, but she smiled. She reached for him. "Oh my god, Simon, you did _so good_."

**000**


	14. if the stars were mine

**chapter fourteen**

**if the stars were mine**

The newly emerged sun was unrelenting, so Simon started scavenging through cars. Eventually he found a huge rotted trenchcoat and a foil windshield reflector, which Marceline held over her head, the sleeves of the trench covering her hands.

"Are you in pain?" Simon asked, taking her arm.

"No, the burns heal pretty quickly. It was dumb of me not to take my umbrella. Let's just get home before we run into more mutants, I'm still pretty weak."

Simon nodded, but went quiet. Marceline found herself growing gradually more irritated with his silence, an irritation that finally reached a head as they descended the off ramp nearest the mall.

"Look dude, don't do this shit, okay?" she said, wrenching her arm from his grip.

"Do what?" he asked, taken aback.

"Get all quiet on me. I can hear the wheels turning in your head. 'Marcy when you are going back to Ooo, Marcy it's too dangerous for you to stay with me.' Well just knock it the fuck off, okay? I'm staying here. You're fucking stuck with me. Sorry. I'm an adult and I can make my own choices and I'm choosing to be with you no matter what, and there's nothing you can do about it, so get off the goddamn cross, okay?"

Simon blinked. "I - wow. That's not what I was thinking about at all."

Marceline looked at him for a disbelieving moment before flushing. "It isn't?"

He shook his head. "No," he said with a smile, "so simmer down, I don't want you going anywhere." He lifted the windshield foil enough to slip in and kiss her cheek.

She shut her eyes. "Shit. God, that probably looked like it came out of nowhere, didn't it?" She pressed her hand to her forehead. "Sorry Simon. I'm an asshole."

"It's okay, you just went through a thing. Come on," he said, putting his hand on the small of her back as he walked, and she floated. "If you want to know what I was really thinking, it's that I hate this place. I think I'm done with L.A."

"You do?"

"I do. I've been steadily hating it more and more as time goes on."

"I did not know that."

"I did not tell you," he said, taking her hand. "I've been thinking about this for a while. Before, when it was just me, I wasn't terribly motivated to move. I had my hole and I planned on staying in it. But now that you're here … well. I want a better life for us. I want to actually, you know. _Live_. You and me. Living and doing and having an actual existence instead of rotting away in a basement and being attacked by mutants. And turkeys."

A slow smile crossed her face. "Aw," she said, and cupped his face to kiss him. "That sounds awesome. But isn't everywhere about the same? Abandoned and filed with mutants?"

He shook his head. "Not necessarily. I mean I have no way of knowing for certain, but it stands to reason that out in the country there's fewer post-people. There's also land for planting food, raising animals even. And our pick of places to live. Just you and me and acres of whatever we want. Our own little kingdom."

She nodded. "Cool! So where were you thinking?"

He smiled. "The most beautiful place in the world," he said. "Napa Valley. Wine country."

**000**

They started packing that night. Once the idea was implanted whatever charm the basement held faded. It seemed even dingier than normal compared to the new bright life of their imaginings.

"There's huge villas out there," Simon enthused. "Chateaus surrounded by nothing but rolling hills. If there's a mutant even thinking about coming near you'll see it miles before it actually gets there. It's sunny, though. Lots of sun -that's why they grew wine grapes there - will that be hard on you?" he asked as he tossed books into a box.

"No - it's -Ooo is pretty sunny," she said. "Are you seriously going to carry those books all the way to Napa?"

"Carry-? No, we're driving."

She blinked. "You have a car?"

"Yup!"

"That works?"

"Well I sure hope so, otherwise all that work was for nothing. C'mon, I'll show you."

The car was stored in the underground parking garage, which was completely dark. Simon carried a huge flashlight.

"I never use this thing. You wouldn't believe how hard it is to find D batteries," he said as he pushed open the stairwell door to the garage. "I hate going in here, makes me feel like I'm playing a survival horror game."

"A _what_ game? That sounds dope."

"They were pretty dope, yeah. Used to love 'em. I'd laugh my ass off," he said, shining the flashlight over rows of rusty cars. "And here she is," he said, pointing to a huge vehicle covered by a tarp. He set the flashlight down on the hood of the car next to it and pulled the tarp off to reveal a large silver vehicle that looked to Marceline like a streamlined turtle.

"Lexus Hybrid SUV," he said. "Very very sweet ride. It's up on a jacks so the wheels don't flatten, all the fluids filled up with stabilizers, new battery. I start her up every now and then and let her run for fifteen minutes or so. Haven't done it since you came back but the engine should still turn over. Let's find out!" he said, and opened the door for Marceline before going around to the driver's side.

The first thing that struck her was the smell and creak of leather, of polish and plastic. Simon put the keys in the ignition, and after a moment of protest the car turned on, causing a delicate cacophony of chimes and a flood of green light from the instruments.

"Boom!" Simon said, holding his palms to the dashboard, illuminated by green light. "Magic!"

Marceline nodded. "This car smells like money."

He laughed.

"Fancy car, the six thousand dollar couch. You like the luxury stuff, don't you?"

"I lived on an untenured Archeology professor's salary for fifteen years, babydoll. Don't mind if I do. These little bits of the high life are some of the only fun things about this whole disaster. Eternal lonely pointlessness? May as well do it in style. Merry fuckin' Chirstmas, Simon. Everyone you know is dead but have a nice car."

She nodded. "Fair enough, fair enough. And to be honest I do kind of want to fuck in here."

"In the dark garage filled with monsters?"

"Silly Simon," she said, moving over to straddle him in the driver's seat. "I _am_ the monster."

**000**

After a moment it became clear that the figures in the headlights weren't going to move.

"Shit," Simon said. "Okay. Hang on."

"Are you just going to hit them?" Marceline asked.

He tightened his grip on the wheel. "I don't think I have a choice."

She nodded. Braced herself. "Fuck 'em up."

Mutants, it seemed, had developed the curious adaptation of hiding in and around rusted out cars on abandoned freeways. Along with the problem of roads rendered impassible by trees or debris, collapsed bridges, and other obstacles brought about by the stoppage of the modern world, the hordes of mutants who made their homes on the freeways turned what under normal circumstances would have been a five or six hour drive north into a six day mission. Simon, having expected this, brought along no shortage of supplies - gasoline, food, and the fully charged iPod - but the constant interruptions to their forward progress were beginning to grate on them both. Marceline twisted her hand into the bar on the door and set her jaw, nearly savoring the splatter of impact as Simon plowed the Lexus through a half dozen spongy, slimy bodies.

"Eww," Simon said, turning on the windshield wipers.

"Good job baby! That was at least five hundred points."

He chuckled. "What am I up to now?"

"…five hundred?"

"Is that all?"

"Well yeah. I mean this is the first time you've just full on rammed the suckers."

"Yeah, well," Simon grumbled. "I'm over it."

"Good!"

"No! Not good! I'm so sick of this! I'd really like to just drive for more than half hour without some ridiculous -without having to turn around or stop the car or go thirty goddamn miles out of the way because the bridge over that goddamn river was out. I just want to go straight," he said, aiming his hands in a chopping motion at the windshield, "in one direction, for an appreciable enough amount of time that it at least _feels_ like we're making progress. I think we've only covered twenty five miles today because of that river. Twenty five miles! I swear to glob I'm about ready to just go full-on Hulk and uproot a fucking tree. I'm just gonna pull over, turn green, and rip a tree right out of the ground. I've had it."

Marceline batted her eyelashes and pouted her lower lip at him.

"Don't patronize me, Marcy."

"But you're so _cute_ when you're throwing a tantrum."

He gave her a warning glance.

She smiled. "Come on, man. You're tired and hungry and bitchy. It's been a long day, we may as well stop for the night. Okay? I'll cook you dinner. You need some rest." She yawned. "And so do I."

He sighed. "Okay. Looks pretty open here anyway."

At the end of each day of traveling - or not traveling, as it were - they found the nearest clearing and set up camp, which consisted of a brazier and a pop-up tent within a larger pop-up tent, so as to spare Marceline's skin from the morning sun. She rather liked the intimacy of it, and so did Simon, seeing as the low ceiling kept her from floating away from him in the night. She still hadn't quite mastered the art of remaining on the bed while she slept. Back at the basement, more often then not she woke up with her torso wrapped securely in Simon's arms, but her behind and legs wrenched up towards the ceiling, like she was underwater. "Mmmmph. Stay _here_," he'd sleepily insist, drawing her down by the hips and drowsing off again, and she would awaken with her knees and feet in the air, and sometimes her arms as well, floating before her like a zombie.

When they pulled over Marceline leapt out of the car and hovered, stretching as much as she could in midair. "Oooof," she said. "I feel like a coiled up spring."

"_You_ feel like a spring? Tell you what, _you_ drive next shift."

"You serious? I barely know what I'm doing."

He shrugged, pulling the tents out of the car while she grabbed the brazier. "What's the worst that could happen? Hit a zombie?"

"Go flying off a cliff at eighty miles per hour?"

"Pssh. I'll give you another lesson tomorrow. People way dumber than you have managed to drive an automatic. Thing practically steers itself."

"Heh. Okay." She poured some coals into the brazier and lit it. 'What do you want for dinner?"

"Nothing that's in here," he grumbled, pawing through a box of canned food. "Corn. Spam. _Woo_."

After the coals were lit she stretched her arms, tipped to the side, did a cartwheel, and flipped to her feet. "Okay, well while you figure it out, I'm gonna go for a run real quick. I feel like my arms and legs are made of cotton."

"Don't get eaten."

"_You_ don't get eaten,' she said, tuned into the darkness, and took off. It felt good, running this way. She suddenly recalled the night she'd taken Finn running with a wolf pack and smiled. Every now and then she felt a sudden wave of nostalglia for Ooo, for her old home and her old friends. But it was never piercing, never painful save where Bonnibel was concerned, but that was a pain that ran deeper than mere nostalgia and had for a long time. She missed them, but her old friends did not grieve her. That was truly how she'd come to think of them - her old friends from her old life. A time that was now passed, from which she'd moved on, and since found her place.

_But,_ she thought, and this the only thought that truly disturbed her, _I hope they're not worried about me._

Something skittered past her feet.

She froze.

Her eyes fell on a tiny, hopping, brownish-white animal speeding away from her into the dark. A rabbit, she realized. She grinned and raced after it, eager to get a proper chase into her muscles. The rabbit dodged left and right and left again, turning her back towards camp, but she was too quick for it, and with a dive she got her hands round it and pressed it to her chest. It only struggled for a moment before going bloodcalm, as most mammals tended to when apprehended by a vampire about to feed. She hadn't intended to drink the rabbit, but the feel of the limp warm body in her hands made her eyelids flutter, made that need burn within her. She clutched it, feeling the buzz of its little heartbeat, and strolled back to the campfire.

"Got you a present," she called to Simon, who looked up from a book. She held the rabbit up for him to see. "Hope you didn't ruin your appetite."

"Well hey!" he said, delighted. "Fresh rabbit would be amazing. Thanks Marcy!" he said. "I think I have the knives in the car somehwere - "

"Eh, it's kind of a present for me too," she said, kneeling next to the brazier. "Bottoms up!"

With that she sunk her teeth into the rabbit's chest. Small as it was she drained it in a matter of seconds. A sweet little lifetime of grazing and running and mating and mating and mating rushed directly to her brain, filling her veins with molasses-rich warmth. She writhed and purred, her body humming, and though it wasn't the overpowering, agonized bliss brought on by drinking an entire buck, it was still _damn_ good. She wiped her mouth, leaving a long red streak on her arm, and looked up at Simon, who looked down at her, breathless and glassy-eyed.

_Oh, he's been waiting for this,_ she thought, and grinned. Looking into his eyes, she drew her shirt up over her head and tossed it away, then lay on the ground, her back arched, extending her arms out towards him in invitation. He nearly tripped over himself on the way over to her, which was cute, but she wasn't in the mood for cute. Her body pulsed and her skin was electric and she wanted to come away from this _bruised_.

He pressed against her, kissing her neck but not her bloodied mouth, sliding her clothes off her body expertly, taking to her with his usual, if frenzied, adoring tenderness. He tossed off his shirt pressed his bare chest to hers. She wrapped herself around him as he ground against her, gasping, and made to take off his pants.

"No," she said.

He paused. "What?"

"I want you to fuck me up."

He blinked. "Huh?"

She slid her hand up along his spine and into his hair, along his scalp, then squeezed and twisted. He gasped. "I want you to pull my hair, like this," she said. She took his other hand and forced his sharp talons into her hip. "And I want you to scratch me with these." She drew him down closer to her face. "I want you to toss me around and fuck the shit out of me like a little gutter-slut rag doll, and I want you to do it before this wears off," she growled.

His eyes widened. He looked doubtful but his rapidly stiffening groin betrayed him. She ground against him and grinned. "Don't be scared. I know he's in there." She extended her long forked tongue and ran it lightly over his lips, leaving them with a thin taste of blood. "I know there's a not so sweet guy in there," she whispered, writhing. "I feel him. Let him out."

He swallow. "I- I don't want to hurt -"

With a growl she rose up and pushed him to the ground, straddling him. She ran her nails up his body, wrapped her hands in his hair and pulled, bit him. He yelped and gasped and pushed against her but she refused to cease the attack, until finally he took her by the shoulders and shook her hard, but briefly, enough to get her attention. He looked hard into her eyes and searched deeply for a moment, as if asking _is this really what you want?_ She nodded, writhing against his hardness, sinking her nails into his thighs.

"Like an _animal_," she whimpered, her breath hot in his ear. "_Please_."

His chin lifted. Something clicked in his eyes. Later he would tell her he'd misunderstood, thinking that for some bizarre reason she wished to reenact what happened in the kitchen those months again, something he would not do even at the behest of his own body. It wasn't until she said the word _animal_ that he understood what she was getting at, what she really wanted - having absorbed the essence of an animal she now wish to play out that wildness. _That_ was different. _That_ he could do.

And he did.

He shoved her off him only to take hold of her again, specifically of her hair, which he twisted and grasped as handle of sorts to flip her over, positioning himself behind her. He put his hand between her shoulder blades and pushed till her face and shoulders pressed into the grass, and then sank his nails into her back, hard, then harder. She cried out, going limp and pliant, but pressing into his hand as he drew it hard along her back. It wasn't until later that he saw he'd drawn blood, he would tell her - all he paid attention to were her cries of pleasure, the way she became entirely submissive and limp as a doll, except when she rose into his touch.

He took her arms and forced them behind her back, bent at the elbow, responding to her cries of encouragement until he seemed certain he was hurting her. "Too much?" he asked, anxious, when her arms bent at a unnatural angle.

"I'm a _demon_," she growled up at him over her shoulder, eyes glowing red.

He nodded. Grinned. "All right then, babydoll," he said.

He lifted her hair from her neck. Marceline bit her lip in anticipation of twisting and pulling, but to her surprise she felt a sudden frigidity form hard against nape and then down soldering her head to the ground, and then the blessed pulling and twisting finally came. Simon yanked at her hair, twisting it hastily into a rope which he used to slipknot her arms back at that uncomfortable angle. She bit her lip, writhing and mewling. He pulled at her hair, pulling her head back against the frigid collar and her arms closer to her head. He leaned over her.

"Happy now?" he asked, sounding satisfied with himself.

She nodded.

"Good," he said, and gave her behind a brutal _thwak_ that reverberated through her body. Stung.

_Ah_, she thought, closing her eyes in bliss as he leaned over her body, pressing his stiffness against her as he bit, hard, along her back. _There's the bruises I wanted._

**000**

"Did you put the crown on?" she asked later.

They stared at the ice collar sitting on the ground between them, now broken.

"No!" Simon said. "No, god - of course not. No."

"Then how did you -? "

"I told you, I don't know! I just - I wanted to do it and I did it." He looked at his hands.

"Can you do it again?"

He flexed his hands, then experimentally fired them at the ground. "No."

She frowned. "Glob. That's really weird."

"It's unsettling, yeah."

She considered it a moment. "You didn't white out or forget any time or anything though?"

"What?"

"I mean you didn't forget who you are or what's going on like you do when you wear the crown, right? You were Simon the whole time, even when you made the ice?"

He nodded.

"Hm. Well … I think that might be … good?"

"How so?"

"You were able to control the ice powers without wearing the crown and without losing your memory, dude. I don't see how that's _bad_."

He shook his head. "I … I don't know. I don't think I like it. I did it without meaning to and I don't know how I did it. What if - what if the crown knows that the pictures and the drills are working and is finding another way into me?"

Her eyes widened. "Shit. When you put it like that.…"

"Yeah."

She sighed. "Well," she said, then took both his hands. "If that's what it's doing we'll fight it together, okay? Two against one. Good odds." She kissed him.

"Your mouth still tastes like blood," he said against her lips.

"Oh. Heh. Sorry."

"No," he said, taking her by the back of the neck. "I like it."

They set out again the next day, and finally reached Napa two days later. "Let's pray the Martinez bridge is still up or we're really fucked," he said when they reached the Carquinez Straight. "We'll have to go days out of our way to find another path across the bay. Cross your fingers."

Marceline sat with her back against the window, her guitar in her lap, with a shawl about her shoulders and a wide-brimmed hat blocking the sun. She played at a weird angle, tilted upwards, but seeing as she was ambidextrous with eight hundred years experience under her belt, she could play guitar behind her back with three legs and tentacle if she wanted. Simon seemed tense as they grew close to the bridge, so she began plucking out the notes to a chipper song she'd discovered on his iPod.

_If the stars were mine I'd give them all to you-_

-she began, tapping his hip with her bare foot at the end of each line-

_I'd pluck then down right from the sky and leave it only blue_

_I would never let the sun forget to shine upon your face_

_So when others would have rain clouds you'd have only sunny days_

_If the stars were mine, I'd tell you what I'd do_

_I'd put those stars right in a jar and give them all to you!_

He smiled. "The accompaniment is nice."

"I mean every word of it. I'd go up there and be like 'hey stars, get in my purse, fuckers,' and then I'd-"

"Oh, here we go," Simon said. "There's the bridge. Oh, breadballs."

They rounded a wide corner and the bridge came into view, two spans, one with a series of mesh half domes and the other bare, both quite old but still standing and solid, free of rusted out pile-ups or other blockages.

Marceline grinned. "It's still up!"

"Yes!" Simon cheered. He patted her foot. "Its because you were singing."

"My singing does have the ability to repair bridges, like, instantly."

Simon laughed and hit the brakes, and when they were stopped he swept her up in his arms and kissed her.

"You're so happy about this bridge!" she said.

"I'm so happy because we're almost there! We have about an hour and a half if the roads are clear. We might actually make it _today_! Next step: squat a chateau!"

"Awesome! I got the crowbar all ready for some breaking and entering! Got one in mind?"

"I kind of do? Well. There's one I'd like to look at first, anyway. I haven't been there since I was a kid but I never forgot it." He smiled. "If it's how I remember it, well…it'll be a good fit for us."

She nodded. "Lead the way, President Petrikov!"

"Bridge to the future! Clinton style!" he said as they crossed the Martinez bridge, the sun sparkling off the water below. It was a gloriously sunny spring day, and though Marceline had to cover herself from head to toe she couldn't help but be cheered by the view, and by Simon's every-brightening mood as they found the highway into Napa Valley mostly clear, allowing them to blow right past any wandering slime mutants they happened to see.

"What did I tell you, nothing but rolling hills for ages! You can see 'em coming for miles! If I had my shotgun I could just pick 'em right off, pow pow, target practice. But I wouldn't wanna waste the bullets."

Marceline grinned. He was happier than he'd been since they'd started this journey. "I'm gonna change the CD to something a little cheerier," she said, the iPod having long run out of juice. "Melody Gardot?"

"Always!"

"You got it," she said. When the "Dark Side Of The Moon" slid out the audio switched to radio, which was usually nothing but the depressingly endless static of a dead world, but this time _something _fuzzed in and out.

They gasped. Marceline grabbed Simon's shoulder. "Did you hear - "

"Yeah!"

They went dead silent, listening as the sound buzzed and faded, and then grew steadily louder, if crunchy. Guitar, she realized. Drums. A catching, ethnic rhythm.

"Salsa music," Simon said softly. "Wow. I wonder how long that's been broadcasting."

Marceline pictured a skeleton, hand at rest on the broadcast switch of an ancient radio, a CD stuck forever on repeat. The thought seemed a bit too hopeless and glum, so she said, "Who knows? Maybe, somewhere around here, someone managed to survive and he's playing music for his plants."

Simon smiled but it didn't touch his eyes. "You never know."

They listened to the salsa for another fifteen minutes until it faded back out into static.

"Short wave," Simon said. "Whatever it is, it's nearby. Not so sure I want to know, to be honest."

"Aw, come on. Maybe someone _did_ make it."

He shook his head. "You haven't seen what I've seen, babydoll. Whoever lived would have to be resistant to massive doses of radiation, so … not human. I don't like it. That music seems almost like a lure." He paused for a moment. "It's like the story of Sarah O'Bannon. You know that one?"

"Nope."

"A long time ago they used to bury people they thought were dead, but sometimes they weren't. They were just in a deep coma or had some other illness that made them seem dead. They'd dig them up later and find the insides of the coffins covered in scratch marks from the people trying to get out- horrific really. Real bad way to go. Anyway, they used to bury people with copper tubing up to the surface, for air, and a bell connected to a string, so if the person woke up they could breathe and ring the bell for help. So one night a grave digger is out doing his job and the bell attached to the grave next to him rings, and he hears a voice through the tube saying saying 'I'm alive, I'm alive, let me out!" and he says 'Are you Sharon O'Bannon? Says you died February 20th?' and she says 'Yes, it was mistake, dig me up!' Gravedigger says 'Sorry ma'am, but it's August. Whatever you are you sure ain't alive no more, and you ain't coming up.'"

Marceline nodded slowly. "So, what you're saying is, whoever is broadcasting that salsa music is _metal as fuck._"

"I'm glad that's what you took away from that."

"For real though! Sounds like my kind of people. Fuck yeah, brother! NightoSphere brofist!"

He laughed. "True. I keep forgetting I don't have to be scared of creepies and monsters with you around."

She blew him a kiss. "I told you, I - "

"I know, you _are_ the monster. Well you're the _cutest_ monster I've ever seen," he said, and squeezed her foot.

She hissed at him, giving her face bug eyes and a hideous, vertical mouth with razor sharp fangs.

"Adorable," Simon said, batting his eyelashes.

"D'aw," she said, drawing the brim of the sunhat down over her now-normal face. She wiggled her feet into his side until he yelped and swatted them away.

"Don't tickle me, I'll crash the car. Would be a shame to get this far and -ah! Tubbs Lane!''" he cried, pointing to a street sign that whipped past them. "Any minute now!"

"I can't wait to see this chateau of yours."

His eyes sparkled. "I think you'll like it."

After a moment of blasting down a country road they stopped at an old iron gate, rusted, half of which swung lazily open. Next to it was a polite, classy little sign that read _Chateau Montelena_. "This is it," he said, navigating the Lexus down a winding path framed by huge, lazy trees that dappled the sunlight. They rounded a sharp corner, then rolled to a stop in the cobblestone driveway of -

"A castle," Marceline whispered. "Simon … this is a fairytale castle."

"Yup!" he said, putting the car in park. He leapt out and opened the door for Marceline, taking her hand to help her out. "Why do you think I remembered it so well?" He gestured grandly to the medieval-looking building, complete with stained glass windows and turrets. The brown stone was covered in climbing ivy, and a tattered American flag hung over the door.

Simon kissed her hand. "Chateau Montelena, m'lady." He opened the trunk of the car, slung his shotgun over his back, grabbed the flashlight, and handed Marceline a crowbar. "Let's do this."

They didn't need any of it. The huge wooden door was unlocked, and Marceline didn't detect the telltale odor of decayed flesh and pond scum that slime monsters carried with them. The chateau was unkempt, dusty, and a bit damp, but otherwise just as the owners left it. There were even wine-stained glasses and open bottles in the tasting room, as though they'd left in a hurry. Everything inside was white stone and glowing hardwood, long tables, small mottled windows with heavy drapes to keep out the sun. The walls were adorned with framed pictures of grapes and smiling white people, with an entire section of wall dedicated to crowing about a certain 1973 Chardonnay which was apparently the feather in the winery's cap.

"We should check out the caves and see if there's still any of that around," Simon said.

"The caves?" Marceline said, abuzz from the pure beauty of the place that was to be their new home.

"Yeah, there's a huge stone wine cellar beneath here. Should be enough wine down there to kill us dead. Let's check it out!" They found the door, went down some steps, and, as promised, he shone the flashlight upon rows of wine barrels stacked one upon the other in a long corridor of white stone. "Yup," Simon said. "That can kill a few football teams of us. Liver cirrhosis, here I come!" He grabbed her hand. "There's something else you've gotta see, come on!"

He led her back up the stairs and down the beautiful wood hall, through the tasting room with high stone walls and paintings, and out again past the car. They went through a short path of forest and down a hill, until they hit a little green moss-covered pond surrounded by lazy willows. Across the murky water was a crisscross bridge that was once painted bright red, with two little red Japanese-style gazebos upon it.

"Jade Lake," he said, pointing at another polite little sign. "So what do you think of the Chateau? Will it suffice?"

She turned to him. "I can't -" she gestured weakly. "I can't even - it's so beautiful. Just everything. It's a _castle_, Simon. It's - I mean it's - you brought me to a castle."

He grinned and took her by the waist, pulling her into his arms. "Well, if you want to know the truth, I started picturing us here ages ago. Me and you. I've had this place picked out for a long time, but I didn't tell you because I wanted it to be a surprise." He pushed her hair behind her hair. "A castle for my vampire queen."

A slow crooked smile crossed her face. Her eyes welled, and she threw her arms around him.

"Simon…."

"Hmm?"

She shook her head, words escaping her. "I love you," she said, though it seemed paltry and anemic compared to what was in her heart. "I love you so _fucking_ much, dude. You're just - you just - I can't - " Overwhelmed, she took his face in her hands and kissed every inch of it while he laughed, and kissed her back. Hand in hand they strolled back up to the Chateau. Right before they got to the heavy wooden door she yelped as he picked her up in his arms, like a groom with his bride, then kicked the door open and carried her into the castle, singing "Welcome home, babydoll!"

The next day he woke her up and took her back down to the road, where he'd painted over the polite little sign. Where before it read _Chateau Montelena_, it now read _Chateau Marcelina._

She laughed and snorted. "You freakin' _dork,_" she said, but she put her arms around him and rested her head on his shoulder, so deliriously happy she could barely breathe.

He gave a low, deep chuckle and patted her bottom. "Yeah, but I'm _your_ freakin' dork."

"You're damn straight," she said, and kissed him. "C'mon buttface. I'll make you breakfast."

"Corn and spam?"

"You know it, unless you shoot one of those swans down on the lake."

"There's swans on the lake?"

"Yup. I can smell 'em."

They went back up the hill as the morning sun shone sparkled down on them, dappled enough by the towers of leaves to spare Marceline's skin. Their arms round one another's waists they slowly strolled the property, joking and laughing and planning. It would become their ritual, that morning walk through the woods, around the lake, the two of them surveying their own little kingdom.

And so it went, for the next ten years.

**000**

_Quoted song is Melody Gardot, "If the Stars Were Mine."_

_Chateau Montelena is a real winery in Calistoga, California._


	15. NEWS!

Hi there - this is not a chapter update, this is just a note to let people know that Chapter 14 IS NOT THE END! I've been getting a lot of questions from folks who think the fic is over. It isn't - if anything it's a little less than halfway through. So don't worry! Unless you see "**THE END"** the fic is not over. Plenty more to come.

In other news, for those you enjoyed "Everything You Know Is Wrong: Reloaded" there is a continuation of the alternate timeline written by MissKeith called "Monsters and Men." It's very well done and has my full approval, so get on over to her author page and check it out. There are also illustrations on her Tumblr at jenjos-sketchbook.

Also, if you are on tumblr, you can check out my blog at "grindylowefic" and the "CrownModeSimon" (from chapter 9) ask blog at "askcrownmodesimon." (He's become a bit of his own thing at this point.)

Thanks everybody! Lots more cool stuff for you on the way!

3 Grindylowe


End file.
